Reading a movie script in book form isn’t something you do every day. I did today though, the script I read was written by Richard Chizmar and Johnathan Schaech and was based on black house by Stephen King and Peter Straub.

It’s always interesting to read a script. It’s very different from a book because you can’t have characters think too much. The moviegoers won’t hear that. They only see what you show them, so there is definitely a big difference between telling a story in book form and in script form. And it’s interesting to get a chance to see that difference.

Chizmar and Schaech have produced an interesting script, but unfortunately it was doomed to fail, at least for now. Why? Well there are two reasons. The first is that you can’t film black house as long as the talisman hasn’t been filmed. There are far too many references that the moviegoers won’t understand. The only chance black house has of ever being filmed is if the talisman is filmed and black house is released as the follow-up that it is. The other reason is similar. There are a lot of references to The Dark Tower in both the book and the script and I think that the average moviegoer hasn’t read those books (shocking I know) and they wouldn’t understand the plot. In other words, black house isn’t a stand-alone book or movie.

But with that said it’s interesting to read the script and I like most of it. The plot moves along a bit too fast though and not enough of the reasons why and how it all is connected is explained. I know, and probably every King fan knows, the backstory and how everything goes together but in this case I don’t think there is enough explanation. Here it needs to be very clear since they need non-King fans to understand it as well.

So, no matter how good acting and directing we would get this would have been a movie for all the King fans out there but not for the average moviegoer. That doesn't mean I didn’t enjoy reading the script though. I did.

The book is released by Borderland Press in their Little Silver Books series, limited to 750 copies, and signed by the screenwriters.