Is there a Joe Hill story that isn't optioned right now? I think even the ones unfinished on his laptop are optioned. Combine his name with that of his famous father, Stephen King, and it probably doesn't even have to have more than an opening sentence.

According to Variety, Throttle, the novella Hill co-authored with King, has been optioned by Nick Wechsler. It won't be published until 2009, in an anthology titled He Is Legend that will be dedicated to Richard Matheson. The story follows a father and son, members of a motorcycle gang, who are being chased by an 18-wheeler tanker truck.

Were you in The Shawshank Redemption? Did you work on set? Were you otherwise involved in the production? If so, you're invited to a 15-year reunion this August in Ohio. Someone having something to do with the 1994 Oscar-nominated film has put together a weekend-long event and a really snazzy website providing details. Oh, and if you're merely a fan of the movie but had nothing at all to do with its making, you can attend as well. A few of the things on the itinerary do cost an admission fee, but only because there are prison and museum tours involved, plus a concert featuring a southern rock band.

Many people consider The Shawshank Redemption one of the best films of the '90s, maybe even of all time, so there are likely plenty of people who'd be interested in a little trip to see the film's shooting locations and meet with extras and crew members who helped create the film. Apparently there aren't many people on board just yet, but if the word gets out to enough people, there's a chance of making this a huge deal. Maybe principal talent like Tim Robbins, Morgan Freeman, Stephen King and/or Frank Darabont could even make room in their schedules to make an appearance. And then, perhaps this can be a yearly thing, like Star Wars conventions and Lebowski Fest.

[via Pop Candy]

You know adaptations that don't merely modify the source material in details and plot mechanics but completely change its nature? Mikael Håfstrom's 1408 is like that. It's an interesting work, less in its own right than because it takes a virtuoso straight-ahead horror story and, in bringing it to the screen, turns it into a nuanced, downright surreal exploration of the protagonist's guilt and grief. You do not expect a film adaptation to tone down visceral thrills and flesh out emotional content. Nonetheless, here we are.

Stephen King's short story, part of the all-around-excellent Everything's Eventual collection (as well as the Blood and Smoke audiobook), is probably the scariest piece of fiction I've ever read. It begins in fairly conventional horror tones – a story about a haunted hotel room – but then moves on to something far more frightening. Ghosts can be scary enough, but you can at least understand them: they used to be like us, and in most cases they want something straightforward. What lived inside Room 1408 of the Dolphin Hotel – King's version – was nothing like that. We don't get specifics, but that's because we wouldn't understand them: the force that inhabits that room is so utterly, terrifyingly alien as to be beyond human comprehension. What Mike Enslin encounters isn't, it turns out, a "haunted hotel room," but an unfathomable cosmic terror that would have made H.P. Lovecraft proud. King does more than give us a scary story – he takes us to the edge of an abyss.

I was beginning to think that the big-screen adaptation of Dolan's Cadillac had once again slid into development hell. First there was Kevin Bacon and Sylvester Stallone. Then, last February, Dennis Hopper was in talks to play the mob boss, and production was going to begin that Spring. Now, we've got a new cast and a new start date.

The Hollywood Reporter posts that Christian Slater, Wes Bentley, and Emmanuelle Vaugier will star in the feature, which is being whipped up by Film Bridge International. This is, most definitely, not a cast I would have thought of. Dolan's Cadillac is a thriller about a man (Bentley) who is distraught when his school teacher wife (Vaugier) is murdered. She has seen a mobster, Jimmy Dolan (Slater), kill someone in the desert, and before she can testify against him, she is murdered. The widower then plans to get revenge on the Las Vegas mobster and his silver Caddy.

To think that I thought Eminem and Hayden Christiansen were an odd match. How on earth do you get from Hopper to Slater? I'm sad to say that this sounds like a desperate rush job now. I love Slater, and have really enjoyed Bentley, but this feels so very second-string. The new production start date: May 14.

That's right; everyone's favorite gore hound, Eli Roth (Hostel), is taking a vacation from blood and guts and trying something just a little different. Roth spoke with journalists backstage at the NME Awards in LA on Wednesday and announced his next project -- a PG-13 'disaster' flick along the lines of Transformers and Cloverfield. Roth told reporters, "This will be my first big-budget, PG-13, mass-destruction movie; I went total chaos and pandemonium." Roth didn't give many more details than that, but ever the self-promoter, he did tell reporters there would be a "big announcement" about the film next month.

So the obvious question is: Why the change of heart? This is the same guy who wanted topless beheaded chicks on his poster art after all. Roth said that, "I feel like I pushed the violence in R movies about as far as I can push it. I feel like I'm bled out. I wanna switch it up, everyone I know has been saying 'When are you gonna do a movie my kids can see?'" -- forget about kids, how about making a movie that doesn't make a fully-grown woman want to upchuck into her popcorn?

Just about anyone who follows horror has bemoaned the sorry state of the genre these days. Nearly everything is a remake, either of some 1970s or 1980s classic or of some recent Asian hit. The rare films that aren't remakes are simply lazy copies of whatever worked a year earlier, the current "torture porn" subgenre, for example. And hardly anything screens for the press, which means that even the studios now understand how low things have sunk.

The new film The Ruins likewise isn't screening for the press, but it is based -- of all things -- on an actual book! With pages! It's by Scott B. Smith, who many years ago wrote both the book and screenplay for the excellent A Simple Plan. The new movie inspired me to look up other literary-based horror movies (whether inspired by novels or short stories). Sadly, aside from Stephen King and the upcoming Midnight Meat Train (based on Clive Barker's short story), I couldn't find much good recent work, but there is plenty to choose from ...

Yesterday we shared some news from Fango: Mick Garris out and Joe Dante in as director of the Thirst remake. That's all fine and good, but you might be wondering exactly why the director switch was necessary. Well, I'll tell you: According to the same Fango report, Mick Garris' next project will be (get this!) an adaptation of a Stephen King story! Fans of either storyteller could tell you that Garris and King have previously collaborated on Sleepwalkers (1992), The Stand (1994), Quicksilver Highway (1997), Riding the Bullet (2004), Desperation (2006), and the (eventually) upcoming From a Buick 8. So this news hardly comes as a big surprise.

I hate to admit that Bag of Bones is one of those King works that I just kinda breezed through and forgot about fairly quickly, but maybe I'll give it a second spin once Mr. Garris starts organizing his cast and crew. If memory serves, the tale is a gothic ghost story noir romance sorta thing. Definitely not among Mr. King's most "fantastical" stories, but a pretty good book all the same. (I think...) More word on the Bag of Bones adaptation when it becomes public.

Warning: Spoilers for The Mist obviously follow.

Though it opened to an enormous collective yawn, I thought that Stephen King's The Mist -- just released on DVD -- was one of the very best films of last year. Perhaps more accurately, I thought it was a movie that Frank Darabont and Stephen King tailor-made for me. There were moments in it that completely embodied everything I love about the horror genre: when a disheveled, bloodied Jeffrey DeMunn barreled into the supermarket, yelling that "there's something in the mist," the terror in his eyes and voice chilled me to the bone. That intersection between the mundane and the fantastical, the film straddling the line between the world we know and some place far beyond our imagination, is what makes that moment, and many others in The Mist, so scary. It approaches its supernatural conceit with an unforgettable combination of horror and wide-eyed wonder.

Sky News reports that two prisoners -- Jose Espinosa, an alleged gang member awaiting sentencing for manslaughter, and Otis Blunt, facing robbery and weapons offense charges -- escaped from Union County jail in Elizabeth, New Jersey on Saturday night. Using improvised tools, the men removed cement blocks from two walls, squeezed through the holes, jumped to a rooftop below, scaled a 30-foot high wall and hopped a razor wire fence to escape from what was considered the most secure area of the prison. The men had only been prisoners for a couple of weeks. Pretty exciting little news story, isn't it? But why am I telling you about it on Cinematical -- the world's greatest movie news website?

Because the escape was apparently inspired by Frank Darabont's modern classic, The Shawshank Redemption! (Which was adapted from Stephen King's novella, but let's just assume these boys saw the movie.) You see, the inmates covered up their escape holes with photographs of women in bikinis! I guess had they used Rita Hayworth posters, it would have been far too obvious. In addition, they put dummies underneath their blankets to give the illusion that they were still in bed -- a trick I'm assuming they swiped from another awesome movie -- Ferris Bueller's Day Off. The escapees left a note saying "Happy Holidays," and thanking a guard they claim helped them escape. The jail -- and I'm sure many more to follow -- have banned posters and photographs from prisoners' walls. Espinosa and Blunt are said to be armed and dangerous, but if the movie taught us anything, they're probably just going to meet up on a beach somewhere and live out their days happily.

With The Mist coming out this week, which just so happened to get a solid review from our James Rocchi, a new interview with Stephen King has gone up on VH1, via MTV News. The discussion focuses on his relationship with long-term collaborator and Mist director Frank Darabont. In his review, James says: "The plot is vintage King, placing ordinary people in an extraordinary circumstance." This is precisely what King discusses -- praising why Darabont has been successful with his adaptations, via his "adult sensibility," and why some other directors aren't taking on his novels.

Specifically, he says: "A lot of times, filmmakers don't really seem to understand ordinary people. I think there's a reason that David Lynch has never made a Stephen King film, or John Waters, because they don't really get ordinary people. But Frank does." I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that's because they both do their own work, not adapt a popular novelist for mass appeal. Waters has made his career from unique stories about the quirks of society, so let's focus on Lynch. I presume King never watched The Straight Story, Twin Peaks, or most of his other work for that matter.

Reducing Lynch to someone who doesn't understand ordinary people is like someone reducing King down to a plebian, gory horror writer. Take Straight Story, Twin Peaks, or even the wilder works like Lost Highway. The two creators are much more similar than King would care to admit. The difference is that he tackles ordinary people with extraordinary happenings rationally and clear-cut, while Lynch is the postmodern artist of the theme. There's lots of "ordinary" people in Lynch's work -- it's just that he spins the arc in a different manner, one that's not always understandable. Alvin Straight is as "ordinary" as they come. As is many of the Peaks characters, or others. Most just go mad in maddening circumstances. Hmm. Sounds familiar.

I've said my peace, but what do you think? Is King the paragon of the ordinary, or are Lynch and he more alike than he realizes?