Warner Bros. Discovery officially announced Tuesday that the adaptation of Stephen King’s “Salem’s Lot” will stream on Max sometime in 2024, pivoting from a proposed theatrical release.
The New Line-produced feature is an adaptation of King’s bestselling 1975 novel of the same name. It follows author Ben Mears, who returns to his childhood home of Jerusalem’s Lot in search of inspiration for his next book only to discover his hometown is being preyed upon by a bloodthirsty vampire.
Lewis Pullman stars as Ben alongside Alfre Woodard, Makenzie Leigh, Bill Camp, Spencer Treat Clark, Pilou Asbæk and John Benjamin Hickey.
The film marks a reunion of the producing teams behind the horror franchises “The Conjuring” and “It.” Gary Dauberman will write, direct and serve as executive producer alongside James Wan and Michael Clear for Atomic Monster and Roy Lee for Vertigo alongside Mark Wolper.
“Salem’s Lot” has long been in development, with Dauberman attached to direct going back to 2020. In July 2022, it was revealed that the movie would debut sometime in April 2023. In February 2024, King took to X (formerly Twitter) and questioned why the movie had not been released saying, “It’s quite good. Old-school horror filmmaking.”
The lack of release was especially questionable as WBD head David Zaslav had previously mentioned that there would no longer be films released specifically to Max.
“We were able to see which content people are spending time watching, what content is really powerful to us in terms of reducing churn, and then there was a lot of content that just wasn’t being viewed,” Zaslav said. “And so we were able in many ways to Monday morning quarterback, and that’s what led us to the conclusion that direct-to-streaming movies were providing really no value to us.”
There were also concerns about the film’s future in the wake of the studio controversially removing Looney Toons feature “Coyote vs. Acme” from its slate.
