The third season of Stranger Things may still be MIA, but at least we now know there's a show in the works that shares some of its DNA.According to Deadline, an adaptation of Stephen King's Joyland is in development at Freeform, and it appears to bear some resemblance to the Netflix show.
Inspired in part by friend-focused Stephen King tales like The Body (which would later become the 1986 film Stand By Me), and It, Stranger Things tells the story of a missing child, a nefarious government lab, and a mysterious girl (Millie Bobby Brown's beloved Eleven) with ties to both.
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Joyland will evoke a similar twisty mystery, albeit the main character in this potential TV show is a little older than the tweens riding their bikes around Hawkins, Indiana.
Set at an amusement park in a North Carolina tourist trap, Joyland follows a college student named Devin as he "confronts the legacy of a vicious murder" and "the fate of a dying child" during his seasonal job.
Oh, and you thought manning a rollercoaster and handing out cotton candy all summer would be fun? Think again, because in Joyland, there are ghosts, murderers, and creepy psychics to keep one company from June to September.
Though Joyland will be the first King adaptation at Freeform, the prolific author — whose stories have long been adapted for the screen — is the original mind behind a slew of recent and upcoming TV and film projects. Hulu's Castle Rock is a compilation of characters King has created over the years, set in the titular fictional town. The Dark Tower, which received a big screen adaptation in 2017, will receive its own television spin-off. On the movie side, fans can look forward to King's The Shining sequel Doctor Sleep in 2020, as well as the clown-centric It: Chapter Two, out in 2019. None of these shows or movies, however, have courted a teen audience specifically. That's where Joyland stands out: It's on Freeform, a channel dedicated to young adults. Teenz, have you read Stephen King?
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