AT&T's Audience Network has given David E. Kelley's adaptation of Stephen King's Mr. Mercedes a straight-to-series order, according to THR, and it has also been revealed that Anton Yelchin and Brendan Gleeson are set to star in the 10-episode series.
Yelchin (Green Room, 2011's Fright Night) will play psychotic killer Brady Hartsfield, aka Mr. Mercedes, and Gleeson (Edge of Tomorrow, 28 Days Later) will portray Detective Bill Hodges, a man who emerges from retirement to try and put an end to Hartsfield's reign of terror by any means necessary.
DirecTV and AT&T Uverse will debut the 10-episode series in 2018. Based on King's 2014 novel, the show will be executive produced by David E. Kelley (Boston Legal, The Practice) and Jack Bender (who also served as an executive producer on the TV adaptation of King's Under the Dome). Kelley is also lined up be the showrunner and pen the script for the premiere episode of the Sonar Entertainment-produced project.
Readers of King know that Mr. Mercedes is the first book in a trilogy that continued with 2015's Finders Keepers and will conclude with End of Watch, hitting shelves on June 7th. There are currently no announcements regarding adaptations of the trilogy's lattermost two installments, but we'll keep Daily Dead readers updated on further details. For those unfamiliar with Mr. Mercedes, we have the book's official synopsis:
“In a mega-stakes, high-suspense race against time, three of the most unlikely and winning heroes Stephen King has ever created try to stop a lone killer from blowing up thousands.
In the frigid pre-dawn hours, in a distressed Midwestern city, hundreds of desperate unemployed folks are lined up for a spot at a job fair. Without warning, a lone driver plows through the crowd in a stolen Mercedes, running over the innocent, backing up, and charging again. Eight people are killed; fifteen are wounded. The killer escapes.
In another part of town, months later, a retired cop named Bill Hodges is still haunted by the unsolved crime. When he gets a crazed letter from someone who self-identifies as the “perk” and threatens an even more diabolical attack, Hodges wakes up from his depressed and vacant retirement, hell-bent on preventing another tragedy.
Brady Hartfield lives with his alcoholic mother in the house where he was born. He loved the feel of death under the wheels of the Mercedes, and he wants that rush again. Only Bill Hodges, with a couple of highly unlikely allies, can apprehend the killer before he strikes again. And they have no time to lose, because Brady’s next mission, if it succeeds, will kill or maim thousands.
Mr. Mercedes is a war between good and evil, from the master of suspense whose insight into the mind of this obsessed, insane killer is chilling and unforgettable.”
Raised on a steady diet of R.L. Stine’s Goosebumps books and Are You Afraid of the Dark?, Derek has been fascinated with fear since he first saw ForeverWare being used on an episode of Eerie, Indiana.
When he’s not writing about horror as the Senior News Reporter for Daily Dead, Derek can be found daydreaming about the Santa Carla Boardwalk from The Lost Boys or reading Stephen King and Brian Keene novels.
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