Did You Know Stephen King Is The Reason The Boogeyman Is Opening In Theaters?
Stephen King’s newest page to screen adaptation will have you wondering if you ever really got over that childhood fear of the Boogeyman.
Expanding upon Stephen King’s eight page short story, comes The Boogeyman. The film follows sisters, Sadie and Sawyer Harper (Sophie Thatcher and Vivien Lyra Blair), who are mourning the recent death of their mother. While their father, Will (Chris Messina), a therapist dealing with his own grief, tries to help a desperate father, Lester Billings (David Dastmalchian), who has been accused of killing his three children. Instead, he leaves behind a terrifying entity that feeds on families, fear, and suffering.
This is the first full length film adaptation of The Boogeyman, a short story published in King’s 1978 collection Night Shift. The story has been adapted twice before as short films under The Dollar Baby Program, a program allowing aspiring filmmakers to adapt King’s stories into short films for a fee of only one dollar. Frank Darabont is a notable alumni of this program who later went on to direct three of King’s feature films: The Mist, The Shawshank Redemption, and The Green Mile.
When asked about King’s involvement in the film, producers Dan Cohen and Dan Levine shared at a press conference that most of their interaction with the writer was through his manager, Rand Holston. “We would get feedback so quickly that it was sort of fascinating to me,” said Cohen. Sometimes “by the hour,” added Levine.
He added that King was “a key force behind this becoming what is now, a theatrical release, which wasn't the original design.” The film was originally going to premiere on Hulu.
King sent an email to the producers, saying, “It's a real shame. I love this film. It's a shame it's not out in theaters.”
Director Rob Savage couldn’t have agreed more: “It's always super gratifying when you plan a great scare and you sit there in an audience and you see everyone jump and throw their popcorn.”
The producing duo shared that they used King’s email as leverage when discussing the film’s release plan. “We used that as a starting point for a conversation with the studio, who also loved the film, and now we're gonna be on big screens,” said Levine.
The reason the film works? The themes, according to Vivien Lyra Blair. “It has this realistic, terrifying theme of grief. Of how if you don't let go of your grief, it comes back to haunt you. Movies like that are always more terrifying, ones that you can really relate to,” she said. “Even if it's not a terrifying physical entity, it's still something that is gonna hurt you later on if you don't let go of it. It's just so real. It makes it all the more terrifying.”
The Boogeyman is currently playing in theaters.
