Stranger Things viewers were quick to point out a sneaky little Easter egg in the season finale, when a copy of Stephen King and Peter Straub’s novel The Talisman made an appearance. However, while this could have been dismissed as just another of many references made to the work of King, a love of which is an obvious influence across the series, there is more teasing about the reference than it first appears.
Almost since the novel was published, Steven Spielberg has held onto the rights to The Talisman, a story about a young boy who can jump between his regular life and an alternate reality that exists just outside of our reality, and recently it has become apparent that The Duffers Brothers could be the ones to help realize The Talisman as Netflix’s next big hit after Stranger Things. During an interview with Deadline, the Duffers explained the current position on the project.
MATT DUFFER: Well, if you can believe it, we’re really into Stephen King, and this was the ultimate. Our friend Curtis Gwinn, one of the main writers on Stranger Things actually asked if we’d be interested in getting involved. There was a show that he was talking with Amblin about. We were immediately excited. We loved The Talisman. It may be the last great 80s Stephen King book that has not been previously adapted, and that’s only because Amblin and Spielberg have held onto it for as long as they have.
They own the rights, and they haven’t allowed any version to get made up to hopefully now. It’s a huge book, it’s really long and I don’t think it would ever have really worked effectively as a movie. Until recently, I don’t think it would have worked as television. It’s like we’re in this new era now where there’s a kind of a merging of television shows that feel and look like movies because they’re getting these pretty big budgets behind them.
So, something like Talisman that even five years ago was not doable, is very doable now. It involves a lot of things that are very similar to Stranger Things. It’s about a kid who’s trying to save his dying mother and he travels into another dimension in order to do so. I mean, it’s much more fantasy. It has sci-fi. It has horror elements. It has a lot of heart. It has everything that we love. And it’s got the best werewolf character I think, ever.
MATT DUFFER: The original pitch for Stranger Things was, what if Stephen Spielberg is filming a long lost Stephen King book you’ve never read? So, how could we turn down a chance where there actually are those two guys working together?
ROSS DUFFER: It’s definitely a dream project. In terms of when it’s going to get made. I don’t know. We just had a meeting about it, but it’s just an outline for the first episode. It’s a ways off but we’re really excited about it.
The Talisman Could Lead To Stephen King’s Dark Tower
For many Stephen King fans, The Dark Tower being realized on screen is a fantasy that many believe will never happen. While Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey starred in a movie based on the sprawling 8 book saga, which also incorporates a lot of lore from King’s other novels, it pretty much failed on all counts. At the time, the film arrived on the back of a failed attempt by Ron Howard to pitch a multi-installment movie and TV project to Warner Bros., and while it looked for a short while that this might happen, the pitch came at a time when that kind of crossover event was unheard of. Of course now, the MCU has proved that it is entirely possible to engage views with interconnected big and small screen projects.
The Talisman features many elements that would also form part of King’s Dark Tower world, and if Netflix can successfully bring the former to the platform with any level of success, that could possibly allow King’s magnum opus to be revisited on the grander scale fans expected of the movie. However, with The Talisman having been in development for decades, and the Duffers hinting that so far they have only been involved in very early stage stuff, the road ahead could be long and fraught with dangers.