Fans Should Worry about Stephen King’s ‘The Regulators’ Film Adaption

This week, Deadline dropped the news that The Regulators was getting a film adaption from Bohemia Group, as the option the right to this lesser know story. You see, The Regulators was published in the 90s under the pseudonym of Richard Bachman. Bachman wrote many books including Rage (1977), The Running Man (1982) and Thinner (1984) and The Regulators was published posthumously, claiming the book’s manuscript was found among Bachman’s leftover papers by his widow. But it didn’t take fans too many years to realise that Bachman was King, and to nail this fact home, King released a book at the same time as the The Regulators, called Desperation. For any fans that read both books, it became apparent that they were heavily connected. Both stories included the same characters, although sometimes the characters would have had a sex swap or an age change, and the overall stories were both connected by the same ancient entity and antagonists known as “Tak”. 

A TV movie adaption of King’s Desperation came out in 2006, directed by Mick Garris and starring Ron Perlman, Tom Skerritt & Steven Weber, and to do the new film adaption of the The Regulators any justice , they should really be looking back at the entire cast of Desperation and calling in a few names. For one, if Perlman doesn’t return as Collie Entragian, I think King fan’s should RIOT! I’m kidding of course, but the point I’m making is that The Regulators isn’t really a stand alone story, it’s a part of a collection that celebrates King’s prolific career as a writer and for his amazing eye for detail.

“The Regulators is the story of the peaceful suburban life on Poplar Street in Wentworth, Ohio that is shattered one fine day when four vans containing shotgun-wielding “regulators” terrorize the street’s residents, cold-bloodedly killing anyone foolish enough to venture outdoors. Houses mysteriously transform into log cabins and the street now ends in what looks like a child’s hand-drawn western landscape. Masterminding this sudden onslaught is an evil creature who has taken over the body of an autistic boy whose parents were killed in a drive-by shooting several months earlier.”

As for the new adaption, it looks like some one called George Cowan is tapped to direct with a script approved by King himself, who had this too say:

“I’m delighted that the excitement of ‘The Regulators’ is coming to the screen… This is going to be good.”

Adding to King’s approval, Bohemia Group’s CEO, Susan Ferris said:

“We could not be more thrilled than to be working with the prolific Stephen King and his team on this project… The novel’s themes and characters resonate so powerfully, and we are looking forward to making an incredible film.”

Well Susan, I hope you are right, but I’m assuming this will be a by the numbers affair and not the multiversal Stephen King adaption it deservers. 

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