Blumhouse Television to adapt Stephen King's 'Later' into miniseries with Lucy Liu

It's a Stephen King kind of week, folks! Deadline has confirmed that Later, the author's third publication from Hard Case Crime, will be adapted into a miniseries via Blumhouse Television. Lucy Liu (Shazam! Fury of the Gods) has been tapped to star in the project, which hails from Emmy-nominated creator Raelle Tucker (a veteran of HBO's True Blood and Netflix's Jessica Jones), who also penned the pilot episode. Jason Blum, Chris McCumber, and Jeremy Gold are executive producers.

“Later is terrifying and touching and wonderfully weird — of course it is — it’s Stephen King," Tucker said in a statement to Deadline. "Adapting one of my favorite writers of all time, with an incredible partner like Blumhouse and the incomparable Lucy Liu, is a dream come true."

Published in early March of last year, Later tells the story of Tia, a single mother and literary agent raising a young son named Jamie. Similar to Danny Torrance of The Shining fame, Jamie has a special talent: he can commune with the dead. When her star client suddenly dies, Tia begins to take advantage of her child's secret ability, using it to elicit best-selling novels from deceased authors. An NYPD homicide detective — who also happens to be Tia's girlfriend — soon gets wind of what's going on and enlists Jamie to help prevent a murder from beyond the grave.

“I’ve wanted to work with Jason Blum for years, and now we have TWO projects together. Go, me!,” King said, referring to the recently-announced Netflix adaptation of Mr. Harrigan's Phone (a novella published in 2020's If it Bleeds collection).

“I’ve wanted to work with Stephen King since before I was born, which sounds impossible until you remember that it’s Stephen King," added Blum.

During an appearance on Good Morning America around the time of Later's release, King compared his own childhood to the challenges faced by Jamie. "When I was a kid, I had a huge imagination and I was a little bit afraid to let people know that because they would think that I was weird or crazy or strange," he explained. "You wanna be like one of the guys, so I tried to keep that a secret. And the little boy in my book has been able to do this ever since he can remember. Since he was just a tyke. And so, he takes it pretty much for granted. But it's his mother who says, 'Jamie, you have to be very, very careful about this because there are secrets and you could find them out and people might wanna know them.'"

The other bit of King-related news this week was confirmation of the author's next novel: Fairy Tale (on sale this September).