Here is a message from King about the charitiy event called An evening with Harry, Carrie and Garp.
I am excited to announce that on the evenings of August 1st and 2nd, I will be reading with the creators of Potter and Garp at Radio City Music Hall. This came about because two good people agreed with me that it might be possible to do one gigantic reading to benefit two charities.
One is Doctors Without Borders, an international independent medical humanitarian organization that delivers emergency aid to people affected by armed conflict, epidemics, natural or man-made disasters, or exclusion from health care in more than 70 countries, and the other is The Haven Foundation, a charity that supports writers and artists who can no longer support themselves because of accidents or illness.
We are doing this at Radio City Music Hall because it is the biggest, brightest venue we could find and we are hoping we can fill it on both nights. We hope to see you there--this is going to be very cool!
- Stephen
You can read more on the official site for the event.
According to this article King, JK Rowling and John Irving are scheduled to do a charity reading in New York in August.
The event is a charity reading for King's recently created charity, The Haven Foundation witch helps performing artists who have suffered illnesses or debilitating accidents that prevent them from working, and for Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières, an international medical group that brings emergency aid to people in disaster zones.
The official trailer for I am the Doorway can now bee seen at www.stephenkingshortmovies.com and the 1990 Stephen King interview (from primetime Live with Diane Sawyer) is now available over at Very Fine Books
Some interesting replies where give on the official message board today.
When questioned about whether King has begun writing any other new novel. The moderator of the official site replied:
He’s been working on short stories this winter.
When asked if King would come over to the UK to do signings the answer was:
He’ll be there in November to promote Lisey’s Story.
When asked if King would do a signing in California the answer was:
We don’t have full details to give out yet but he’ll be in California to promote Lisey’s Story.
Here are some comments by Eli Roth about the movie version of Cell:
"It's going to be a full-on, big-budget, apocalyptic zombie movie. Really sort of like more in the spirit of the Dawn of the Dead remake."
Roth added: "Everyone on a cell phone gets zapped, and they go completely insane. So they're not really zombies. They're just people that go around killing anyone that's in front of them."
Roth said that he plans to bring his own peculiar sensibility to the material. "Well, there's going to be a little bit of violence," he said, with tongue in cheek. "There's going going to be some blood. I want to make it really, really, really sick. Just full-on sick. But I also want to try to make it a worldwide event. Like, I don't want to see it just happening in one little town. I really want to see people going crazy all over the world and just see the end of civilization."
Roth said that he's following in the footsteps of some of his favorite helmers. "The thing about Stephen King is that so many of my favorite directors have adapted his work," he said. "And they're so varied. I mean, you have The Shining and Carrie and George Romero. So they wind up being a blend of Stephen King and whatever that director's personal taste is. And that's what I plan on doing with Cell."
The moderator on King’s official site just confirmed that King will be doing book signing(s) on the U.S. West Coast when he promotes Lisey’s Story in October. No info on when, where or how many has been released yet.
Here is a look at the cover for Stephen King’s The Dark Tower: The Complete Concordance. It’s both volumes in one and it’s supposed to hit stores on October 31st.
Finally I can give you a first look at the US cover of Lisey’s Story. Unfortunately I don’t have a color version yet but this will give you an idea of what it looks like. It will look much better in color once it’s finished. And as you can see it’s quite different from what we are used to…
If you want to see Desperation early, here is your chance:
The Tucson Film Office and Fox Tucson Theatre are presenting an exclusive prescreening of Desperation, a made-for-TV adaptation of Stephen King's book of the same name, on Saturday, May 6. Desperation was filmed in and around Tucson and Bisbee in the fall of 2004. Several cast and production members are scheduled to appear and get a red-carpet welcome, including director Mick Garris, producer Mark Sennet and actors Steven Weber, Annabeth Gish and Ron Perlman. The red-carpet opening event starts at 6:30 p.m., followed by opening comments by the director and producer at 7:15, and the film screens at 7:30. Tickets are available for $25 at the Fox Tucson Theatre box office at 17 W. Congress St.
This description of Lisey’s Story is from the moderator of King's message board:
"Lisey’s Story is about the wellsprings of creativity, the temptations of madness, and the secret language of love." Translated, that means a woman is regaining memories of the dark side of her husband triggered when she is going through his belongings after his death".
Monday’s winner is chosen but first the right answer.
Question: Who is Claudia Eschelman? Answer: Richard Bachman's Widow (formerly Claudia Inez Bachman).
And the winner is Luis Vazquez-Venegas from Canada, congratulations!
That ends this contest but if you want more contests you just have to wait until the week of May 22nd when I’ll have something really nice in store for you. That week will be Desperation Week here at Lilja’s Library and I can promise you that you do NOT want to miss that!
Due to an error on www.veryfinebooks.com today’s question has been disqualified. The answer is RRD28I but on the www.veryfinebooks.com it says RR28I. Many of you might say that so what if it was wrong on www.veryfinebooks.com? It’s not the only source out there and you are right. But since I say that "all answers can be found at http://www.veryfinebooks.com" I feel it does matter.
What now then? Well, based on previous experience I won’t allow both answer and I won’t disqualify the ones that have answered with RR28I. So, in an attempt to be as fair as possible a new question will appear during Monday next week. I’m sorry for this and I hope you all feel this is the most fair thing to do.
I apologise for this and hope you can sympathise with my decision.
And now, on to Thursday’s winner.
Question: What was the error on the 1st printing of PET SEMATARY on the back of the DJ? Answer: "1982" Caretakers Error
The winner is Jodie Bennett from Australia, congratulations!
This description of Lisey's Story is given by Michael Chabon on Amazon.com:
"In Lisey's Story, Stephen King makes bold, brilliant use of his satanic storytelling gift, his angelic ear for language, and above all his incomparable ability to find the epic in the ordinary, to present us with the bloody and fabulous tale of an ordinary marriage. In his hands the long, passionate union of Scott and Lisey Landon--of any long-lived marriage, by implication--becomes a fantastic kingdom, with its own geography and language, its dark and stirring chronicle of heroes and monsters, its tragedies, griefs and glories. King has been getting me to look at the world with terror and wonder since I was fifteen years old, and I have never been more persuaded than by this book of his greatness."
-- Michael Chabon, author of The Final Solution: A Story of Detection and The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
Fangoria had gotten this new image from Desperation and also had the following report about the DVD release:
Fango got the scoop that Lionsgate Home Entertainment will release the desert-set story of evil and redemption August 29. No word yet on special features, or whether this cut will be more extreme than the one ABC broadcasts.
Stephen's Picks for the week of April 19, 2006 is out (it's a short one this time):
* Stephen is reading 18 Seconds by George D. Shuman -- (Excellent!)
Eli Roth talks about Cell with TVGuide.com: TVGuide.com: You recently signed on to direct the movie version of Stephen King's Cell. What appeals to you about that story?
Roth: I love zombie movies and I love horror movies that have some level of social commentary in them. When you read that book, you feel that Stephen King has been driven crazy by people on cell phones. I think it's such a smart contemporary idea to have everyone on cell phones turn into psychotic serial killers. I've always wanted to do an apocalypse movie, a zombie movie and a Stephen King movie.
TVGuide.com: So you're a fan of his work?
Roth: Oh, yeah. Stephen King is my favorite writer. So many great directors, be it [Stanley] Kubrick or [Brian] De Palma or George Romero, have adapted his work. To have the opportunity to do it was so unexpected. I'm really psyched.
TVGuide.com: You mentioned Stanley Kubrick. He and Stephen King had a famous falling out over The Shining because his film was vastly different than the novel. Would you feel comfortable making alterations to the source material if necessary?
Roth: That was 25 years ago. I think Stephen King is probably in a different place now. I think he really likes me and trusts me. Everybody has told me to just go make the best movie and that if I have to change things, Stephen will be cool with it. Otherwise, I wouldn't have done it. I don't want to upset Stephen King — I want to make him proud — but I've got to have the freedom to change things if I'm going to make the movie.
Cemetery Dance has the following update about The Secretary of Dreams:
And finally, Stephen King has now approved final pages for The Secretary of Dreams so it's headed to one last round of proofreading and then onto the printer. We'll post more news in future updates, but this is shaping up to be our most beautiful production ever!
I get quite a few mails about when Stephen King: Uncollected, Unpublished will ship and now Cemetery Dance has published this update:
We're currently a little over one-third through shipping all the preorders for Stephen King: Uncollected, Unpublished and the additional help we brought into the warehouse is really making a difference. Please note that we have well over a thousand individual orders for this book, and each copy has to be hand numbered and slipcased so it'll take a while to ship. Thanks in advance for your patience!
After Brian Berkowitz, James Renner and Scott Albanese comes Mark Montalto with the 4th version of All That You Love Will Be Carried Away. You can read more here.
Thanks to Bernd Lautenslager at Stephen King Short Movies
Here is the full DVD cover for season 4 of The Dead Zone (bigger scans can be found at TVShowsonDVD.com) as well as a list of all the extras on this box:
- "The Production Design of The Dead Zone" featurette, taking the fans behind the scenes into The Dead Zone's award-winning Production Design department to showcase the unique look of the series
- Audio Commentaries
- Deleted Scenes
- 16x9 Widescreen
- 5.1 Dolby Digital Audio
- Closed Captioned
As you know Swedish director Mikael Håfström is making a movie out of King’s short story 1408. I checked in with Håfström and asked some questions about it. You can read what he said here.
This is from Publisher's Lunch:
Next Monday at sales conference, Simon & Schuster sales reps will be introduced to Stephen King's October release LISEY'S STORY, along with Scribner's new strategy for presenting the galley to the trade. With this experiment, Scribner publisher Susan Moldow tries to take on the vexing issue of how to give "an author's first line of supporters a chance to read a new work early and build the word of mouth on which we all depend," without unduly fueling a pre-publication black market in the work. Read the complete text
The Secretary of Dreams by King is now in the hands of the author so he can approve the design. The book came in over the 250 pages Cemetery Dance expected, and they will announce the official page count later on.
Issue #100 of Insomnia is now online. Besides being a nice fan magazine this issue has a short interview (scroll down a bit) with yours truly. You have to understand Spanish to read it though…
I just got an email from Mick Garris in which he told me that ABC has moved the airdate
for Desperation to Tuesday, May 23rd. They are getting wonderful feedback to the film, and apparently that would be a stronger night for it.
Marvel has selected writer Peter David to script the first seven issues of The Dark Tower Comic.
The comics will work in conjunction with the novels, further supplementing and defining the saga’s mythology under the direction of the acclaimed author himself.
The first issue is set for February 2007. Here is the full press release.
Fangoria is running a feature article about The Secretary of Dreams. You can check it out here. They forgot to mention that Glenn created Marv – The Library Police Man though…
ComingSoon.net reports...
Samuel L. Jackson has checked into 1408, the Dimension Films adaptation of the Stephen King short story. Variety says that shooting begins in the summer.
Mikael Håfström (Derailed) will direct and John Cusack stars as a debunker of paranormal occurrences who encounters real terror when he checks into the notorious Room 1408 at the Dolphin Hotel. Jackson plays the hotel manager.
Matt Greenberg wrote the original script and Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski did the rewrite. Lorenzo Di Bonaventura is producing.
The short story was originally published in the collection Blood and Smoke.
The moderator of King's official message board had the following to say about the plot of Lisey's Story.
I’m only about 1/2 way through so far. It will be horror with mystery, ghosts, monsters, and Dark Tower related. :-)
OK, I bet there are a lot of you out there waiting for the right answers and the winner of the contest, right? First I want to thank you all for entering. Some of you sent in a lot, and I mean a lot of errors (mostly broken links) and for that I’m very grateful! All in all 848 entries dropped in and that is a very good number.
A new Dollar Baby has surfaced. It’s called Suppr. and is a French version of The Word Processor of the Gods. It was made by Nicolas Heurtel, Charles E. Lacroix, Nicolas Geffroy, Julien Munoz and David Marques in 2005 at the University of Marne-la-Vallée, with music by Agnès Vincent.