Somehow, over the course of both Stephen King and Sam Raimi‘s long and storied careers, the two horror icons have never worked together. That will change with Searchlight Pictures’ upcoming adaptation of King’s 1996 novel Desperation, which Raimi is set to produce through his Ghost House Pictures. According to the Hollywood Reporter, Zach Lipovsky and Adam B. Stein, directors of 2025’s Final Destination Bloodlines, are in talks to direct. Ryan Brennan will write the script.
Desperation was published at the same time as The Regulators, its “mirror novel” that King published under his pseudonym Richard Bachman. Desperation and The Regulators take place in parallel universes, though they incorporate many of the same characters and revolve around deadly events caused by the same mysterious villain. However, the new film is only an adaptation of Desperation, which could leave The Regulators as a potential sequel option.
The description for the new adaptation reads, “Stranded in a remote desert town where something evil has awakened, a group of travelers must fight to survive when a sadistic, possessed cop turns routine arrests into a relentless fight for their lives.”
Desperation was also adapted into a made-for-TV movie in 2006. That version aired on ABC and starred Ron Perlman, Tom Skerritt, Steven Weber, and Annabeth Gish. King wrote the script for it.
Currently, frequent King collaborator Mike Flanagan is working on a new film adaptation of King’s The Mist. In 2025 alone, three different adaptations of King’s work—Osgood Perkins’ The Monkey, Francis Lawrence’s The Long Walk, and Edgar Wright’s The Running Man—hit the big screen.
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