CASTLE ROCK
IT’S THE TOWN POPULATED BY THE DARK IMAGINATION OF STEPHEN KING – AND NOW IT’S PRIME TV REAL ESTATE. BRYAN CAIRNS HITCHES A RIDE TO CASTLE ROCK. AND MAY NEVER LEAVE...
Stephen King’s nightmarehaunted real estate comes to the screen. So many compelling reasons never to move to Maine.
There’s a real sense of a town with old hurts and wrongs, secrets and betrayals
Castle Rock, Maine is arguably one of the scariest places on earth. the picturesque town has frequently served as ground zero for disturbing phenomena in a number of prolific author stephen king’s novels, including The Dead Zone, Cujo, Needful Things and The Dark Half. Given the immense crossover potential, who could resist combining characters from all across the king oeuvre? Well, that’s happening in Hulu’s new show, Castle Rock, and its showrunners Dustin thomason and sam shaw are unlocking the community’s dirty little secrets along the way.
“Part of what we set out to do in creating this show was to look at what small town life was really like in 2018 and to think about the ways in which the era we live has encroached upon that small town life,” thomason says. “there is something about the horror next door and the quiet secrets that lurk in the sewers beneath a small town that has everybody on high alert all at once. If you think about Needful Things, for example, the arrival of a store owner unsettles an entire small town... In london, a single store owner probably wouldn’t rock all of london, but castle Rock can totally be upended in a single storefront opening.”
“as a reader, I was really interested in the sense of place in the commanding way that stephen king writes about Maine,” shaw continues. “It’s not a generic approach to horror. He really knows the place he is writing about. there’s a real sense of a lived-in town with old hurts and wrongs, of secrets, betrayals, disasters and nightmares that you feel reading the stories of castle Rock and neighbouring Derry, too.”
GHOST TOWN
Produced by JJ abrams’ company Bad Robot, Castle Rock opens with an ominous flashback, followed by a shocking present-day death. an anonymous call lures death row attorney Henry Deaver [andre Holland] back to his hometown of castle Rock. He didn’t have an idyllic childhood there and the past soon returns to haunt him.
“the inciting event for our story involves the discovery of a prisoner at shawshank state Prison,” thomason explains. “He’s an individual we don’t want to say too much about, but there’s a sense of mystery that surrounds him. His very unusual legal case draws Henry back to shawshank Prison and castle Rock, almost against his will. It sets in motion a whole [series] of uncanny events that are going to have implications for everyone who lives in the town, and for the prison, and for castle Rock itself.”
Humans are often as terrifying as the monsters themselves in king’s body of work. characters perform despicable acts that eventually escalate into violence and chaos. In this case, castle Rock’s residents – real estate business owner Molly strand (Melanie lynskey), former sheriff alan Pangborn (scott Glenn), shawshank state Penitentiary warden Dale lacy (terry o’Quinn), taxi driver Jackie (Jane levy) and Henry’s adoptive mother, Ruth Deaver (sissy spacek) – all harbour their own proverbial skeletons in the closet.
“this is one of the reasons we were really excited to be able to tell a 10-hour stephen king story for cable tV and take advantage of the bigger canvas the form allows,” shaw offers. “there are a lot of monsters in the stephen king library, and they come in all shapes and sizes. there are thrilling plots with hairpin turns and surprises. But I think the reason those books have such a purchase on our collective imagination is that they really are psychological. He is truly a great character writer. often, over the course of a novel, the monster may be vanquished and there may be the sense that good has triumphed over evil, and order has been restored. But, there are all these everyday nightmares that hover on the edges of the stories, whether it’s the alcoholic parents or the spouse who can’t be trusted or the vindictive neighbour. all those human horror stories endure. It was exciting for us to be able to tell a stephen king story that has the bandwidth to really explore the psychology of its characters over 10 hours.”
“In every supernatural stephen king story, not only are there human monsters who fill in the pages, but, usually – I am thinking of The Stand, Needful Things or The Shining – the supernatural often boils down to digging out the vulnerabilities and horrors that live inside of the people,” thomason elaborates. “From Dreamcatcher to The Stand, even if there is some otherworldly force operating, ultimately that otherworldly force is really driving humans to be either the best or worst versions of themselves.”
“Needful Things is ultimately a morality tale,” shaw continues. “What destroys the town of castle Rock in that story isn’t the machinations of [villainous] leland Gaunt. It’s that this devil-like figure provokes a response on the part of a town and causes the town to destroy itself. as a writer, king is really attuned to human frailties and weaknesses and darkness. that is partly what makes him so provocative. often, the real monster is the monster that may live somewhere inside the recesses of even your hero or the reader.”
Familiar faces, such as Needful Things’ sheriff Pangborn, previously confronted malevolent forces and figures on multiple occasions. other fresh blood, such as Jackie, grew up in castle Rock. so, what do the locals make of their town emerging as this hub for supernatural activity and bizarre occurrences?
“What was interesting about returning to this material now is we live in this moment defined by fear,” thomason tells SFX.
there are easter eggs and references that’ll reward phd-level kingophiles
“We think of this as the era of terror. there are a lot of questions about how you continue to live in a world that feels increasingly uncertain and fragile. Part of what we felt was there wouldn’t be one monolithic point of view within castle Rock about the nature of all the misfortunes that have been visited on the town. there are people who live in this town, who hold onto a supernatural vision of what has befallen them. then there are others who think they are just in a bad luck town, in a bad luck country. the reality is they go on with their lives, in the way that all of us do, even in the face of disaster.”
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king fans hoping the series will shed some light on what draws the freaky and the frightening to castle Rock may have to wait a little longer. the showrunners believe the master of the macabre should address those larger, mythology-related queries.
“to us, that’s a question ultimately stephen king can answer, but he’s never answered it,” shaw notes. “We also see an opportunity to explore people’s notions, some of which may be right, and some might be wrong. We may start to pull back some of the layers of what is at the core of some of these terrible things, or at least the way our characters interpret it. that’s a way we like to think about it. It would be an injustice to all the books that came before it for us to give an easy answer.”
shaw and thomason could spend all day geeking out about king. the pair admit they littered the show with sneaky shout-outs, tie-ins, name-drops and easter eggs. However, not all viewers are well-versed with the king canon. as a result, the two spent a considerable amount of time thinking about how to craft a season accessible to everyone.
“our goal was to write a season of tV that would be provocative, fun and surprising to somebody who comes to the material completely fresh… a stephen king virgin or somebody who doesn’t necessarily consider themselves a horror fan,” explains thomason. “at the same time, we love this material. We’ve worked really hard to construct a season of storytelling that will be welcoming to novice stephen king readers and to blackbelt fans as well. there are a lot of easter eggs, references, connections and surprise appearances from minor or major characters that will reward a PhD-level kingophile. at its heart, it’s also an original story that will be fun for an audience that may not have an encyclopedic knowledge.”
looking forward, shaw and thomason appear to have taken a cue from American Horror Story’s anthology format. Castle Rock’s first year was conceived as a self-contained tale. season two will spin in a different direction, potentially featuring other characters, a new setting or an alternate time period. the possibilities sound endless.
“this is a complete, 10-episode story with a beginning, middle and end,” shaw concludes. “We would love to be able to tell stories set in this town and this world. But, who exactly will live at the centre of those stories, and when the story will take place in the timeline of this season, those are all Bad Robot-level secrets.”
Castle Rock is on Hulu in the US from 25 July. UK broadcast TBC.