Adaptation of Stephen King’s THE INSTITUTE in the Works with David E. Kelley and Jack Bender

Hot off the presses and having just hit store shelves today, Stephen King's The Institute is already being developed as a limited series adaptation.

Multiple sources, including The Hollywood Reporter, reveal that a limited series adaptation of Stephen King's The Institute is in development at Spyglass Media Group, with David E. Kelley set to write and executive produce the adaptation, and Jack Bender slated to direct and executive produce the project.

No stranger to the world of Stephen King, Kelley and Bender have worked together on AT&T Audience Network's Mr. Mercedes series, which premieres its third season tonight. Bender is also executive producing the upcoming limited series based on King's 2018 novel, The Outsider.

Here's what King himself had to say about The Institute adaptation (via THR):

"I’m delighted to be working with Jack and David, the creative team behind Mr. Mercedes. We think alike, and I believe The Institute is going to be a great success."

We'll have to wait and see if The Institute is ordered to series and how many episodes it will be, and it's important to note that while Mr. Mercedes was initially developed as a limited series, it's now kicking off its third season.

We'll keep Daily Dead readers updated on The Institute adaptation as more details are announced, and in the meantime, for those unfamiliar with the 576-page book, we have its official synopsis and cover art below (via StephenKing.com):

"In the middle of the night, in a house on a quiet street in suburban Minneapolis, intruders silently murder Luke Ellis’s parents and load him into a black SUV. The operation takes less than two minutes. Luke will wake up at The Institute, in a room that looks just like his own, except there’s no window. And outside his door are other doors, behind which are other kids with special talents—telekinesis and telepathy—who got to this place the same way Luke did: Kalisha, Nick, George, Iris, and ten-year-old Avery Dixon. They are all in Front Half. Others, Luke learns, graduated to Back Half, “like the roach motel,” Kalisha says. “You check in, but you don’t check out.”

In this most sinister of institutions, the director, Mrs. Sigsby, and her staff are ruthlessly dedicated to extracting from these children the force of their extranormal gifts. There are no scruples here. If you go along, you get tokens for the vending machines. If you don’t, punishment is brutal. As each new victim disappears to Back Half, Luke becomes more and more desperate to get out and get help. But no one has ever escaped from the Institute.

As psychically terrifying as Firestarter, and with the spectacular kid power of It, The Institute is Stephen King’s gut-wrenchingly dramatic story of good vs. evil in a world where the good guys don’t always win."