Academy Award winer Julianne Moore (Still Alice, Wonderstruck) stars in Lisey’s Story, new limited series coming to Apple TV Plus on Friday, June 4, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The series is written by best-selling author Stephen King (It, The Shawshank Redemption) and is based on his 2006 novel of the same name, Entertainment Weekly reports. The first trailer for the eight-episode thriller was uploaded to YouTube on May 11. Check it out below:
Lisey’s Story follows an author’s widow as she straddles the boundary between her own grievous reality and her husband’s otherworldly fantasies: “Lisey Landon (Moore)… [is] two years removed from the death of her husband, famous novelist Scott Landon (Oscar nominee Clive Owen, Closer). Hounded by sinister fan (Dane DeHaan, A Cure for Wellness) obsessed with getting his hands on Scott’s unpublished manuscripts, and faced with a series of unsettling events involving her sister Amanda (Oscar nominee Joan Allen, The Contender), Lisey is forced to confront memories of her dead husband that she had [previously] repressed,” via Entertainment Weekly. Members of the supporting cast include Sung Kang (F9, Power), Emmy Award winner Ron Cephas Jones (This Is Us, Luke Cage) and Oscar nominee Jennifer Jason Leigh (The Hateful Eight, Atypical), via The Hollywood Reporter.
Directorial duties on Lisey’s Story were handled exclusively by Chilean craftsman Pablo Larraín (Ema, Jackie). In November 2020 interview with The Washington Post, King lauded Larraín’s gift for striking imagery. “He’s got a lot of ideas that don’t depart from the through-line of the story but are beautiful visual things, with a lot of energy,” King stated, via The Playlist. King’s series is actually the second production Moore and Owen have done together under the guidance of Spanish-speaking director. Both starred in the 2006 science fiction film Children of Men directed by Academy Award winner Alfonso Cuarón (Y Tu Mamá También, Roma).
King is hardly a stranger to mounting small-screen adaptations of his own literary works. He penned the teleplays for ABC miniseries based on The Stand and The Shining, as well as the screenplay for TV movie based on Desperation. King imparted in a recent interview that writing a streaming show has afforded him more opportunities for creative expression than he could have ever imagined back when he was adapting his books for network television. “The whole form… is opened up in a way that it wasn’t before. You have a chance to do more. You can be a little more graphic with language and with sexual situations and… do something that has that kind of spread, texture, and a little more nuance,” he explained, via Entertainment Weekly.
The first two episodes of Lisey’s Story will arrive on Apple TV Plus on June 4. The following six installments will be added to the platform on a weekly basis until July 16, according to IndieWire.