EXCLUSIVE: Chris Long and David Ayer’s Cedar Park Entertainment has acquired Stephen King’s The Bone Church and will develop it as a TV series. Cedar Park will be the studio for the project as well. The Bone Church is a narrative poem that King wrote in the 1960s. He later revised it and the poem was published as part of a King anthology, The Bazaar of Bad Dreams. In it, an adventurer organizes an expedition deep into a vast jungle land to locate the mythic Bone Church. They discover a secret not meant for the eyes of strangers. Only three of the 32 travelers escaped with their lives in a tale narrated by one of the survivors, who tells stories from a bar stool to patrons who’ll buy him drinks.
This deal extends the relationship between Long and King. Long was an executive producer on Mr. Mercedes, the superb series adaptation of the bestselling King novel for Audience Network. Long left an 18-year run as programming chief at Audience to form Cedar Park with Ayer. Ayer most recently directed the Netflix hit Bright and before that Suicide Squad. Ayer will direct and write Bright 2, which Netflix green lit after the Will Smith-Joel Edgerton-starrer became the highest viewed film on the streaming service. Long was exec producer on the MMA series Kingdom, You Me Her, Religion of Sports, Loudermilk and Hit the Road, as well as the upcoming Condor and Give Us This Day.
As for King, his back list has been very busy, including the blockbuster It with director Andy Muschietti returning for the sequel, and the upcoming Hulu series Castle Rock. Mike Flanagan just signed on the direct Doctor Sleep, King’s sequel to The Shining.
This becomes the second series for Cedar Park, which set at Starz the drama Family Crimes. Scripted by Ayer and produced in conjunction with Jerry Bruckheimer Television, that series follows a young privileged Latina who must reinvent herself in order to save her family when the feds close in on their business with the Mexican mob.
King is repped by Paradigm.
Subscribe to Deadline Breaking News Alerts and keep your inbox happy.