Why was Stephen King forced to give up a complement to the vampire film, a favorite of worship

In 1988, horror anthology entitled “Prime Evil: New Stories of the Master of Modern Horror” was published, as most of the collection’s distinctive short stories were original. Many stories sweeping part of these selections, including the influential “The Juniper Tree”, were “coming to sadness”. But horror anthology in the late eighties is incomplete without Stephen King, and certainly enough, His short story “Laila Flair” The pages of this group grew. King’s writing in this super short story, but it is effective different from his usual style: it is more chaotic without the way to establish it, but this ends with complementing the imaginary nature of the story. After all, “The Night Flier” is the story of vampires, where King Tropies associated with this sub -type explore.

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Vampires do not appear prominently in the work of King compared to a person like Anne Rice, however A large number of stories include this imaginary monster And specific support suspends the king. “Salem Lot”, “The Dark Tower” and “Wolves of Calla”, are only few examples, but “The Knight Flair” approaches the cup in a fairly unconventional way. The story opens with the Tablebid Richard Des corresponding to a column around The Laila Flair, a serial killer responsible for the heinous deaths. While the tabllade Richard tends to the exciting garbage materials, it approaches the issue with the idea that the murderer He thinks It is a vampire – a discount based on the remaining evidence at the crime scene.

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As with most King’s works, “The Night Flier” got the treatment of feature films in 1997, with a movie called HBO and received a limited theatrical version after a short period. The film’s performance was bad (more about this later), as it achieved up to $ 210,426 in 91 theaters in the United States. A continuation was planned, with King’s interesting enough to participate in writing the script with director Mark Pavia, who operated and participated in the 1997 adaptation writing. Unfortunately, this did not come to pass it. What happened here?

The reasons behind the Pavia adaptation lead to a very bad way can reach several factors. For beginners, “The Night Flier” was an independently funded project that initially attracted attention from studios like Paramount Pictures, but the schedule of conflicts and contractual obligations impeded this commercial deal. After HBO’s screening, New Line Cinema picked up and then facilitated a limited theatrical version.

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We know what happened next: The film turned as it was beaten due to the empty entertainment of source materials. However, the film has been reassessed over the years, with the proof it deserves well to the performance of Miguel Ferrier such as Richard Des, and the ability of the film to evoke a unique crawl that complements its gloomy topic. Gradually, the film has become a (secondary) blow.

Pavia did not give up his adaptation despite the fate of the unfortunate box office, as it began to work on a text entitled “Fear of Flying” in the middle of 2000. According to Pavia, King participated in writing parts of the text, as the author was enthusiastic about the possibility of a follow -up story focused on the various protagonists. Pavia talked about this experience in an interview with 2017 with BlumhouseSaying that the king asked the producer Richard B. Robinstein if he can cooperate with Pavia on the continuation:

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“The King (the Special Text Program) has read it, and goes,” This is really good. “It is like,” Was it announced to work with him?

As for the context, the 1997 movie “The Night Flier” ends with the death of Richard, but the novice correspondent Catherine Blair (Julie Euwahzel) plays an important role by installing the crimes on Dees, although he knows that he is not the killer. This dark end aims to consolidate Catherine as an unethical press correspondent who trades her morals for a viral story, and highlights the evil industry that flourishes the excitement. The sequel was supposed to focus on Catherine, and King and Bva Masrran was to work on a new story that explored parallel topics. Unfortunately, no one wanted to finance $ 10 million for the DVD film that bombed. If any consolation, This is not the worst movie Stephen King.

In King’s short story and adaptation, Richard Des is not a good man. King leads this house by exploring the deepest breaks of this uncomplicated novel, which is spoiled and without pants like the tabloid industry in which he works with joy. Richard is skilled in manipulation, ready to go to any length to publish a story (think about a less complex or interesting version of Corner Strenger Lu Blum in “NightCrawler”). But King does not draw Richard with a wide brush, because this nihilistic man and deep contempt also lost, and his humanity was buried under layers of hardening mockery. Initially, the so -called vampire murders are only fuel for a harmful story, but the following events cut this man, forcing him to do something he hates: he feels sympathy for a colleague man.

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Pavia’s movie does not come close to these threads with the differences he deserves, but Richard Fererr embodies the complications of his short counterpart to perfection. Here, Richard is desecrating Griffs to obtain a quick picture of the victims and a machine gun to collect exaggerated accounts to fatten his fictitious news reports. But this quickly turns into a worrying obsession with the murderer (which is appropriately goes Renfield), and seeing the Richard tunnel leads to an inevitable confrontation with the man who is following him. A mixture of consuming horror (distorted bodies, contaminated blood) and supernatural elements (drinking Renfeld’s blood causes intensive hallucinations) that makes an intense and frightening sequence that ends with the death of Richard. On the one hand, Richard had been coming, but on the other hand, Renfield escaped, and is supposed to be on his way to a batch of the following victims.

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Although the appearance of Renfield Vampiric seems more than an improved character rather than a supernatural identity, his presence is annoying enough to inject the movie with suspense. In the end, our focus is still attached to Richard, the actual blood that absorbs life from real life crimes by decorating it with the lies that sell. However, his death does not end this terrible cycle, as Catherine takes his place as a new face for the undeccustician press. The rest is exactly what you expect the horror of DVD.