Joe Hill Prepares Dark Fantasy Before Book Release

A new fantasy production is taking shape in Hollywood with an unusual element: it's being born even before the original print material. Joe Hill (Stephen King's son) is in fact developing a film based on an as-yet-unpublished short story of his, which has already landed in the hands of Sony Screen Gems.

The project immediately attracted the attention of Scott Derrickson, already behind The Black Phone and Doctor Strange, who decided to accelerate the timeline, moving the story towards an immediate adaptation. This atypical choice reverses the classic book-to-film path.

A New Production Model

In parallel, Hill continues to expand his creative universe on the serial front as well. The adaptation of "King Sorrow" is in development, a story set in a Maine college where magic and real consequences intertwine in a far from reassuring way.

The story follows a group of students involved in an extreme event, which pushes them to resort to dark practices to remedy it. Between dangerous evocations and irreversible pacts, the story moves through a territory halfway between fantasy and horror, with an atmosphere close to what is called "dark academia".

This is not a surprising direction for Hill, an author already behind adaptations like Locke & Key, who in recent years has demonstrated a strong ability to transition from page to screen. If the project goes through, it could mark a new production model: stories conceived from the outset to exist simultaneously between literature and audiovisuals.