Stephen King sends Julianne Moore into a world of pure imagination in first trailer for Lisey's Story on Apple TV+

Try not to lose your grip on reality with the first trailer for Lisey's Story, a brand-new Stephen King adaptation coming to Apple TV+ early next month. Penned by the master of horror himself, the eight-episode limited series (based on the 2006 novel of the same name) follows the titular Lisey (played by Carrie's Julianne Moore), a recently-widowed woman who starts to go mad after the death of her husband, best-selling author, Scott Landon (Clive Owen). Except she's not really crazy.

Thanks to a mysterious scavenger hunt left behind by her late spouse, Lisey starts to remember that Scott's books weren't just fiction — they came from another realm created from pure imagination.

In her quest to unlock what she'd hidden away from herself, the protagonist finds herself in the sights of a dangerous stalker, Jim Dooley (A Cure for Wellness's Dane DeHaan), who seems to be in cahoots with Roger Dashmiel, a college professor (Luke Cage's Ron Cephas Jones) who wants to get his hands on Scott's unpublished works.

“I don’t want to put anybody off. It’s not a simple story. It’s not A to B to C,” King told Vanity Fair last month. “You hope that the audience will understand that there are secrets here — there are really big secrets — and hope they’ll stick with the show, find those things, and unravel them. I think everything becomes clear fairly soon.”

Watch the trailer below:

“The themes are about legacy, memory, and that Lisey has to build herself up to protect Scott’s legacy and be together in a combination of sensibilities," series director Pablo Larraín explained earlier this year. "It’s a romantic suspense thriller with fantasy elements."

“He directs in a kind of hypnotic, inside-out way,” executive producer J.J. Abrams said to VF when talking about Larraín's filmmaking style. "His approach lent itself well to a story that, at the core of it, is a very, dark and twisted adult fairy tale." The Bad Robot founder is no stranger to the KingVerse, having produced 11.22.63 and Castle Rock over at Hulu. The project is also executive-produced by King, Larraín, Ben Stephenson (Westworld), and Juan de Dios Larraín (Jackie).

Check out the official key art:

Credit: Apple TV+

Joan Allen (Pleasantville), Jennifer Jason Leigh (The Hateful Eight), and Sung Kang (Obi-Wan Kenobi) round out the rest of the principal cast.

Lisey's Story premieres on Apple TV+ Friday, June 4.