King's "Kingdom" Comes to TV
by Josh Grossberg
Jul 23, 2001, 10:45 AM PT
King connoisseurs, get ready for the real fear factor.
ABC has announced plans to debut Stephen King's The Kingdom as part of its lineup for the 2002-03 television season.
It will be the frightmeister's first full-blown foray into prime-time TV series-dom. His previous tube work consists of creating the short-lived Stephen King's The Golden Years for CBS in 1991, adapting The Stand, The Tommyknockers and Storm of the Century into miniseries and taking a stab at writing an X-Files episode.
The show will kick off with a two-hour season premiere written by the prolific author and be followed by 13 one-hour episodes, all centering on "shocking and frightening tales" taking place inside a hospital that's been built on an ancient graveyard, according to ABC execs, who announced the project Sunday at the Television Critics Association's semiannual gathering in Pasadena, California.
"This has been a passion of his," Stuart Bloomberg, cochairman of ABC Entertainment, told reporters in a press conference on Sunday. "He might write all [the episodes]. He loves this project."
While The Kingdom bears the King moniker, it's actually based on Danish director Lars von Trier's (Dancer in the Dark) TV soap series by the same name, which became a hit in his native Denmark and was released as a feature film in the U.S.
Bloomberg says that despite drawing from outside source material, fans can still expect vintage King scares in the tradition of Misery, Carrie and Cujo.
"He's going to make it very much his own," says Bloomberg.
Given the novelist's own brush with death and subsequent hospital stay following a car accident two years ago, the author can speak with authority about grim hospital goings-on. In June 1999, King was nearly killed when a van struck him from behind while he walked along a highway near his home in Maine. He suffered a collapsed lung, broken ribs, and fractures to his hip, leg and pelvis.
(The subsequent surgeries, year of rehab and medical bills, said King, ended up costing him an estimated $65 million to $75 million in lost writing income.)
ABC hopes King's Kingdom helps the network out of the ratings morgue--the Alphabet Net flatlined from first to third place during the 2000-01 season.
"In a year when many of us believe that any of the major networks are one big hit away from being number one, we really feel that we are well positioned to find that hit," said network cochairman Lloyd Braun. "I don't think we are really going to significantly improve our position without taking some well thought-out risks. And we are prepared to do that."
by Josh Grossberg
Jul 23, 2001, 10:45 AM PT
King connoisseurs, get ready for the real fear factor.
ABC has announced plans to debut Stephen King's The Kingdom as part of its lineup for the 2002-03 television season.
It will be the frightmeister's first full-blown foray into prime-time TV series-dom. His previous tube work consists of creating the short-lived Stephen King's The Golden Years for CBS in 1991, adapting The Stand, The Tommyknockers and Storm of the Century into miniseries and taking a stab at writing an X-Files episode.
The show will kick off with a two-hour season premiere written by the prolific author and be followed by 13 one-hour episodes, all centering on "shocking and frightening tales" taking place inside a hospital that's been built on an ancient graveyard, according to ABC execs, who announced the project Sunday at the Television Critics Association's semiannual gathering in Pasadena, California.
"This has been a passion of his," Stuart Bloomberg, cochairman of ABC Entertainment, told reporters in a press conference on Sunday. "He might write all [the episodes]. He loves this project."
While The Kingdom bears the King moniker, it's actually based on Danish director Lars von Trier's (Dancer in the Dark) TV soap series by the same name, which became a hit in his native Denmark and was released as a feature film in the U.S.
Bloomberg says that despite drawing from outside source material, fans can still expect vintage King scares in the tradition of Misery, Carrie and Cujo.
"He's going to make it very much his own," says Bloomberg.
Given the novelist's own brush with death and subsequent hospital stay following a car accident two years ago, the author can speak with authority about grim hospital goings-on. In June 1999, King was nearly killed when a van struck him from behind while he walked along a highway near his home in Maine. He suffered a collapsed lung, broken ribs, and fractures to his hip, leg and pelvis.
(The subsequent surgeries, year of rehab and medical bills, said King, ended up costing him an estimated $65 million to $75 million in lost writing income.)
ABC hopes King's Kingdom helps the network out of the ratings morgue--the Alphabet Net flatlined from first to third place during the 2000-01 season.
"In a year when many of us believe that any of the major networks are one big hit away from being number one, we really feel that we are well positioned to find that hit," said network cochairman Lloyd Braun. "I don't think we are really going to significantly improve our position without taking some well thought-out risks. And we are prepared to do that."
