Stephen King Novel 'Rose Madder' Being Adapted for the Big Screen

[blu-mike]

There are numerous big screen Stephen King adaptations, from the really good (The Shining) to the really bad (unfortunately there are too many of these to list but here's one for you...Dreamcatcher) and the "Oh yea, he did write those didn't he?!" (The Shawshank Redemption , The Green Mile) in between. But somehow, King's Rose Madder has evaded the feature film treatment until now. Variety is reporting that Palomar Pictures and Grosvenor Park are working on an adaptation of the 1995 novel with screenwriter Naomi Sheridan, writer of In America and daughter of My Left Foot director Jim) scripting the project.

No word on a director or any stars attached to the project but something tells me it won't be Mr. Sheridan after the flop that was Dream House (for the record, the director was very unhappy with the studio's final cut and wanted his name removed from the film). Madder, like many of King's stories, centers around elements of domestic violence (It, Needful Things, etc.) and tells the story of a woman who flees to the big city to escape her abusive police officer husband. Once there, she trades her wedding ring for a painting of a woman in a rose madder-colored dress, which she soon discovers is a kind of magical portal to a fantasy land and that the woman in the painting is kind of insane. From there, it's revenge, murder, an underground labyrinth, an evil one-eyed bull, magic seeds that grow a magic tree and all kinds of other Kings-isms. To make a long story short, s**tjust gets weird.

I'm not sure the book is ripe for the picking when it comes to big screen adaptations, which is likely why it's gone untouched for 16 years and is being brought to us by smaller production companies but I guess it's too early to judge and time will tell. Fun fact though: like many of King's stories, Rose Madder has connections to the author's other works, most significantly The Dark Tower series. The question is whether or not this adaptation is just as desired as that one...

this will be a possible flop lol