The new Salem’s Lot has had a difficult production, and it turns out it was originally running at three hours. More here.
Gary Dauberman’s take on Stephen King’s vampire novel Salem’s Lot is finally here after years of uncertainty about its fate. A trailer has arrived for the film, which has already premiered in the US on the Max streaming platform. Here in the UK we’re getting the film this weekend in cinemas too, apparently.
Covid-related issues saw the film get pushed back by seven months as far back as 2022, and it hasn’t exactly been plain sailing since then.
One story circulating a while ago claimed that it was only the positivity of Stephen King himself that saved the project from the same fate as Batgirl and other deleted Warner Bros projects. However,as is often the case with such troubled productions, the film that has emerged at the end of the process is somewhat compromised with early reviews not being glowing.
Gary Dauberman, the film’s director has talked about the experience of making Salem’s Lot, revealing that his original cut was three hours long, not the slimmed-down 113 minute version that audiences will see.
According to World Of Reel, Dauberman said: “There’s a lot left out. My first draft of the script is 180-odd pages or something because you’re trying to include everything. And a lot of it has to do with a lot of the secondary characters and stuff that I spoke about. So it was sad to see that stuff go, but it’s like a necessary evil.”
“A necessary evil” isn’t exactly the kind of term that suggests Dauberman enjoyed the post-production process, is it?
Both previous adaptations of Salem’s Lot have clocked in at three hours, suggesting that King’s tome needs that kind of runtime. Still, the haphazard decision making process about whether Dauberman’s film would come to cinemas or streaming can’t have been helpful to the filmmaker as the winds of change kept blowing, even as he was trying to figure out how long his film should be.
Salem’s Lot releases in the UK on 11th October.
