Stephen King‘s novel Billy Summers is getting a film adaptation. Deadline reports that Warner Bros. acquired the rights to the author’s bestseller book published in 2021. J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot and Leonardo DiCaprio’s Appian Way are set to co-produce the film for Warner Bros.

Billy Summers is the next work of King that is getting an adaptation, following the series Lisey’s Story, Castle Rock, and 11.22.63. Deadline previously confirmed last year that the novel was supposed to be adapted as a ten-episode limited series and was shopped around through different networks. However, the original plan fell through since the creatives behind the project believed that the novel was better adapted as a feature. As a result, the novel will now be a feature for Warner Bros, with Ed Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz will be writing the adaptation.

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No further details are revealed about the project, but Deadline noted, “If this comes out great, it could be a project for Abrams to direct with DiCaprio playing the title character.”'

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Described as One of The Best Stephen King Novels in A While

     Warner Bros. Pictures

Stephen King, known to linger terror in his works, aims to tell the tale of a hitman named Billy Summers in the book, who plans to retire soon, so he takes one last job with a massive payout to fund his retirement. A mob boss hired him, and the job is a pretty lucrative one that entails arduous effort as he needed to live and blend into a quiet town where his target lives. He was tasked to pretend as an aspiring writer. As time goes by, the hitman becomes more cynical and anxious about the job he was hired to do. His apprehensions were right from the beginning, as things went south quickly as soon as he completed the job.

The project seems promising since the book received positive reviews from different sites. The New York Times published a review of the novel, saying, “A lot of writerly angst seems encoded in all this; lingering pique, perhaps, from ancient debates about the literary merits of King’s hugely popular fiction. (Harold Bloom dismissed his 2003 National Book Award medal for distinguished contribution to American letters as “idiocy.”).”

The review further continued, “It certainly makes for an interestingly complicated subtext, which is soon matched by the text itself as Billy starts planning his own counterscheme for getting out alive (and getting paid) — an elaborate ploy involving serial identities, multiple disguises, secret addresses and a daunting quantity of phones and computers.”