The Upcoming Adaptation of Stephen King’s Billy Summers Might Show a New Side of His Work

Stephen King is deservedly considered one of the living icons of horror. He has written some of the most beloved and popular stories in the genre’s history, many of which have been adapted for TV and film. But as readers well know, the author has also left his stamp on many other genres across his six-decade run, from the high fantasy of The Eyes of the Dragon and 2022’s Fairy Tale to the dystopian sci-fi of The Long Walk and The Running Man (both under his Richard Bachman pseudonym).

In the past decade or so, King has increasingly turned his pen towards a genre he’s on record as having loved his whole life: crime fiction. Works like 2013’s Joyland, 2018’s The Outsider, and the Bill Hodges trilogy of Mr. Mercedes, Finders Keepers, and End of Watch all play in the genre. While a couple of them have been adapted for television, King’s horror work still reigns supreme in Hollywood. But an upcoming adaptation might help turn the tide, as King’s 2021 novel Billy Summers is set to be adapted into a film in the near future. If the movie succeeds, it could show casual fans that King has mastered a whole new genre.

Billy Summers’ Portrait of a Hitman

Billy Summers follows its titular protagonist, an Iraq War vet making a living as a contract killer, who’s forced to hold up in a small Midwest town for months to await his next target. While he waits, Billy adopts several personas to blend in with the locals, one of which, in true King fashion, is a first-time novelist. This persona makes Billy want to write down his life story, and large sections of the book are devoted to Billy working through his troubled upbringing on the page. The novel settles into a relaxed pace in its first half, before a major narrative turn halfway through takes the story in a different direction.

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Billy Summers: What is the Upcoming Stephen King Adaptation About?

The newest King adaptation is a bit of a departure for the well-known horror author.

This midpoint twist divided critics. Some considered it an exciting narrative move, while others favored the more laid-back first half and found that the second half took a turn for the lurid and cliche. Still, most critics who reviewed the book agreed it contained some of King’s best writing in years, whether in its character-focused first half or as a whole.

Most of King’s crime stories still contain some element of the supernatural, from Later‘s protagonist’s ability to see ghosts to The Outsider’s mysterious shape-shifting villain. Billy Summers, by contrast, doesn’t have a paranormal hook; rather, it anchors its story in the here-and-now (or at least, the here-and-now of late 2010s America). King has written plenty of prose over the years without an overtly paranormal element. At least one of them, the novella “Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption,” anthologized in 1982’s Different Seasons, was adapted into what many consider one of the greatest films of all time.

How a Billy Summers Movie Might Add to King’s Legacy

Despite the success of movies like The Shawshank Redemption and Stand By Me (adapted from another Different Seasons novella, “The Body”), the popular perception of King’s work stays squarely in the horror realm. There’s no denying that his contribution to that genre outweighs any other on sheer word count alone. The association is so strong that casual TV viewers who checked out Mr. Mercedes, the series adaptation of his Bill Hodges novels, might have been surprised to see his name in the credits.

In recent years, Hollywood has been on a serious King kick. Studios have been cranking out adaptations of works like Gerald’s Game and Doctor Sleep alongside new takes on previously adapted classics like IT, Salem’s Lot, and Pet Sematary, though these don’t always improve upon their predecessors. King’s name recognition still has huge value, but the most lucrative adaptations have generally focused on telling and re-telling his most famous stories. A successful Billy Summers movie might show Hollywood that King’s more recent work is still worth adapting.

A cinematic take on Billy Summers has a lot of potential, but there are some challenges. The deep interiority that King brings to his characters has often struggled to make it to the screen intact, and the richness of his prose doesn’t always translate to film. Figuring out a way to depict Billy’s awakening as a writer authentically will be difficult, but necessary to keep the story from feeling too much like other recent hitman fare. However, the script is set to be penned by veteran screenwriters Edward Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz, so there’s plenty of reason to be optimistic.

King’s legacy is already more than secure as one of the most prolific and beloved authors of all time, and one whose works have been fruitfully adapted for the screen many times. He doesn’t need a successful Billy Summers movie to cement his status as one of the greats. But for those who only know his work from its big- or small-screen incarnations, it could help prove there’s more to his stories than just scares.

Stephen King

Birthdate

September 21, 1947

Birthplace

Portland, Maine

Notable Projects

The Shining, Cujo, The Shawshank Redemption, It, Carrie