Author Stephen King and J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot are collaborating once again with Deadline reporting that the production company is gearing up to adapt recent King novel Billy Summers. My So-Called Life and Nashville EPs Ed Zwick & Marshall Herskovitz are attached to adapt the novel with Zwick in line to direct. Details on the show, a limited-series adaptation, are light at this point with the potential for the adaptation to run six to 10 episodes with “high-end cable networks and streamers” being the targeted homes for the show. King gave an interview over the summer where he suggested Jake Gyllenhaal should take on the title role.
“Billy Summers is a man in a room with a gun. He’s a killer for hire and the best in the business. But he’ll do the job only if the target is a truly bad guy. And now Billy wants out. But first there is one last hit. Billy is among the best snipers in the world, a decorated Iraq war vet, a Houdini when it comes to vanishing after the job is done. So what could possibly go wrong? How about everything.”
“This spectacular can’t-put-it-down novel is part war story, part love letter to small town America and the people who live there, and it features one of the most compelling and surprising duos in King fiction, who set out to avenge the crimes of an extraordinarily evil man. It’s about love, luck, fate, and a complex hero with one last shot at redemption.”
