After conquering TV and film, Stephen King moves to podcasts with 'Strawberry Spring' adaptation

Stephen King's fiction has been coming to the big and small screen for decades, often times through with the author himself guiding the work behind the scenes. Now, after years of success in film and television, King is branching out into yet another media frontier: Scripted podcasts.

The Wrap reports that King's classic short story "Strawberry Spring" will get its first-ever major adaptation as a new podcast from Audio Up Media, iHeart Media, and producer Lee Metzger (Legendary, The Voice). Metzger will also write and direct the series in his first scripted podcast effort.

“As a lifelong fan of Stephen King, I couldn’t be more excited to work with [Audio Up founder Jared Gustadt], Audio Up and iHeart Media to bring this story to life," Metzger said. "I couldn’t ask for a better project for my first scripted podcast.”

Garrett Hedlund, Milo Ventimiglia, Herizen F. Guardiola, Sydney Sweeney, Ken Marino and Al Madrigal will lead the voice cast for the series, which is adapted from a story most readers originally encountered in King's first short story collection, 1978's Night Shift.

Named for a kind "false spring" that brings unseasonable weather to New England, "Strawberry Spring" tells the story of a journalist who hears the phrase "Springheel Jack" and is immediately reminded of his college years, when the Strawberry Spring brought with it an eerie fog, through which a serial killer dubbed "Springheel Jack" prowls the night. With the return of Strawberry Spring comes another round of Springheel murders, and the journalist grows determined to hunt the killer down, no matter how far he must go.

Though Night Shift has produced numerous major adaptations over the years, including Children of the Corn, Sometimes They Come Back, The Mangler, Graveyard Shift, and Maximum Overdrive (adapted from the story "Trucks"), "Strawberry Spring" was until now largely untouched by major producers in any form. Interestingly, news of the podcast adaptation arrives at the same time another Night Shift adaptation, the EPIX series Chapelwaite based on King's story "Jerusalem's Lot," is set to hit our screens. Perhaps more podcasts filling in the Night Shift gaps will follow soon.

Strawberry Spring does not yet have a release date.