Stephen King's Joyland hasn't even been released yet, but the film rights have been acquired. Deadline reports that The Help writer/director Tate Taylor has acquired the rights from King, and will both write and direct the adaptation.

This is a project that could move forward very quickly, as it was mentioned that right to develop the movie was only given for a limited period of time. This is something Stephen King has been doing more recently to prevent projects based on his material from being stuck in development hell.

For those unfamiliar with the novel, it revolves around an amusement park serial killer and will be released on June 4th:

"Hard Case Crime, the award-winning line of pulp-styled crime novels published by Titan Books, today announced it will publish JOYLAND, a new novel by Stephen King, in June 2013. Set in a small-town North Carolina amusement park in 1973, JOYLAND tells the story of the summer in which college student Devin Jones comes to work as a carny and confronts the legacy of a vicious murder, the fate of a dying child, and the ways both will change his life forever. JOYLAND is a brand-new book and has never previously been published. One of the most beloved storytellers of all time, Stephen King is the world’s best-selling novelist, with more than 300 million books in print.

JOYLAND will feature new painted cover art by the legendary Robert McGinnis, the artist behind the posters for the original Sean Connery James Bond movies and "Breakfast At Tiffany’s," and by Glen Orbik, the painter of more than a dozen of Hard Case Crime’s most popular covers, including the cover for The Colorado Kid."

Source: Deadline
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