Stephen King’s Most Popular Stories Come Together in ‘Castle Rock’ Trailer

Hulu’s new series combines elements from ‘IT,’ ‘Carrie’ AND ‘The Shawshank Redemption.’

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXsKCQenpt0

Now more than ever, Stephen King is a hot property. It’s an amazing run for an author who first hit it big in the 1970s with iconic horror novels like It and Carrie. 

It seems only natural that someone thought to pull elements of his tales together and place them in the town at the center of King’s fictional universe for the new Hulu series, Castle Rock.

Castle Rock might seem familiar, and the music in the trailer above is a big clue—in a way, Stephen King was writing his own extended version of Twin Peaks long before that series was a glint in David Lynch’s eye. 

Seriously. One town in the forest in a state that borders Canada where a ton of really weird shit goes down. It’s not a big stretch, save that King and Lynch tell very different yet ultimately equally creepy stories.

And Castle Rock, where King set novels like The Dead Zone and Cujo, is a very creepy place. Here are the basics about season 1 from TV Guide:

Season 1 will consist of 10 episodes and will premiere July 25. According to The Verge, it will tell the story of an attorney named Henry Deaver (played by Moonlight’s Andre Holland) who returns home to Castle Rock to represent an inmate at Shawshank Prison with an “unusual legal problem.”

It will weave in references to King stories the same way King self-references in his fiction. Further seasons will tell new tales with different people, but will exist in the same interconnected universe.

The trailer heavily features Bill Skarsgard, a.k.a. Pennywise in the new movie versions of It, and previous teasers have featured Sissy Spacek, the original Carrie. 

Hopefully we’re in for the kind of queasy fun King is known for as well as that eerie sense of a haunted place that was so powerful in Twin Peaks. A crossover featuring Kyle Maclachlan’s aging Dale Cooper would be great, but that’s too much to ask.

Castle Rock begins streaming on July 25th.