We first reported on Tom Holland adapting Stephen King's The Ten O'Clock People for the big screen back in 2012. At one point, it looked like Justin Long was going to take on the lead role, but a new report reveals that Jay Baruchel has signed on to star in and executive produce the movie. According to THR, who broke the casting news, Tom Holland is looking to begin filming this June in Montreal.
Stephen King’s The Ten O’clock People was a short story published in 1993 as part of Nightmares and Dreamscapes. The story follows Brandon Pearson, "who in trying to kick his smoking habit uncovers a frightening aspect of reality, he plans to extinguish through extreme measures."
We spoke to Tom Holland back in late 2012 and he had the following to say about updating the story for modern audiences:
"Stephen and I had dinner when I was making The Langoliers and he had recently finished writing Nightmares and Dreamscapes, which had that short story. He was aggravated at dinner because we were both still smoking at the time. They still had smoking and non-smoking sections, but this particular restaurant had gone totally non-smoking. He was aggravated, and needless to say, I wasn’t too thrilled myself.
We were thinking about what kind of people would be exerting this control. It felt like the government trying to control our personal habits. As the internet and digital is growing, the ability of authorities to track you, know what you’re doing, and limit your personal behavior is growing. It seemed to me that the themes that were in The Ten O’Clock People went further than just having a cigarette. I thought it was an interesting platform to make a metaphor of what could happen if things went wrong.
What I’ve done is added a drug element. It’s about people who have taken a stop smoking drug and went back to smoking. Then they start seeing things that they shouldn’t be seeing."
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