IT director Andy Muschietti has already found success with one Stephen King adaptation (stretched into two movies). He may direct another one. Back in 2015, a few months before he replaced Cary Fukunaga as IT director, Muschietti was announced to be helming a different King project – an adaptation of short story The Jaunt.
Of course, once he was hired to direct IT, that took precedence. But four years later, Muschietti’s The Jaunt may still be moving forward. Muschietti himself told Consequences Of Sound that the film is in development at Brad Pitt‘s production company Plan B:
“We tried to crack it and now we finally have a writer that can do it. I would love to. It’s tough to crack because it’s such a great short story, and then you have to expand it into a great film narrative. It took awhile, but now I think we got it. I don’t want to tell too much”.
Muschietti’s IT adaptations haven’t been everyone’s cup of tea, but it would be interesting to see what he could do with a different King story. Rarely do you see a director adapt multiple books from the same author. Although, Mike Flanagan is about to pull off the feat when Doctor Sleep hits cinemas and joins his other King adaptation, Gerald’s Game.
The Jaunt is from King’s Skeleton Crew collection. It takes place in the 24th Century, as a father explains the ground rules for ‘jaunting’, a form of teleportation the family will be using shortly to go to Mars. Travellers must be under anaesthesia for the journey, or terrible things happen to their mind during the process.
Adapting short stories for film can be a tricky task; we’ll see if Muschietti can pull it off. The glut of commissioned King adaptations continues.
#Peace.Love.TheJaunt
