A director has been announced for New Line’s upcoming film version of Stephen King’s classic novel, ‘Salem’s Lot, and it seems the search did not have to go too far or wide: Gary Dauberman, who’s already writing the screenplay, will now get behind the camera as well for the James Wan-produced project, according to the Hollywood Reporter.
Dauberman made his directorial debut last year on Annabelle Comes Home, easily the best of the three Annabelle movies and a genuinely creepy exercise in its own right. Dauberman has also written the Annabelle trilogy, as well as The Nun, and also co-wrote the King-based films It and It: Chapter 2 with director Andy Muschietti, all for Warner Bros. Pictures’ New Line division.
‘Salem’s Lot was King’s second published novel, coming out in 1975. It was centered around a town in rural Maine called Jerusalem’s Lot that is overrun by vampires after an ancient bloodsucker arrives there from Europe. A small band of townspeople, led by a haunted writer, a young boy, a college professor and a local artist, try to stop the plague before it overtakes the entire town.
King’s book, long considered one of his finest (by the author himself, as well), was acclaimed for its fresh spin on the vampire genre, taking the monsters out of their usual Gothic or period settings and placing them squarely in 20th century small town America (much like King’s hero Richard Matheson had done with his own classic book, I Am Legend).
