‘Gerald’s Game’ Director Reveals Why The Stephen King Adaptation Was ‘Unfilmable’

Coming to Netflix later this year is the adaptation of the Stephen King story Gerald’s Game, which was directed by Mike Flanagan. As a recent guest on the Mick Garris-hosted podcast Post Mortem, the director revealed just how difficult this specific story was to manifest as a feature film.

In a clip posted by Bloody Disgusting, the director explained to Garris, “I, much like you, have been chasing this for a long time. I was 19 years old when I read it for the first time, and I put it down and had goose flesh all over my arms. I thought it was such an astonishing story.”

“I put the book down and I thought, ‘It’s brilliant and it’s unfilmable,’ ” he said.

Up Next: ‘Gerald’s Game’ Producer Reveals Details About Adapting Stephen King’s Novel

The filmmaker went on to explain exactly what made an adaptation so difficult, for those unaware with the story.

“It centers around a woman who spends pretty much the entirety of the novel handcuffed to a bedpost, ‘alone.’ It’s all in her head. It’s this stream of consciousness as you go through her experience, which gets into her memories,” he described.

“Which is a very rough experience,” Garris pointed out. “It’s not just being chained to a bed.”

“It’s horrific, in a lot of ways,” Flanagan responded. “There were parts of the book that I couldn’t continue reading, I had to put aside, they were so upsetting.”

More: Netflix Orders ‘The Haunting Of Hill House’ Series Adaptation

Despite these challenges of adapting the story, the filmmaker pursued the opportunity at every chance he got.

“When I first moved to Los Angeles, I carried a hardcover in my bag whenever I would take general meetings,” Flanagan confessed. “Anyone who’d ask me what my dream project was, I’d pull it out, and [the response I’d get was] either they were familiar with the book and said it’s unfilmable, or it wasn’t available.”

That persistence paid off, however, as the director eventually cracked how the story could translate to a film.

“It had taken me years to come up with a mechanism that I thought would make it somatic without changing the books,” the director revealed. “The temptation to make big changes in an adaptation of a story like that was huge and I really didn’t want to do that.”

Gerald’s Game doesn’t have an official release date, with Flanagan next working on a 10-episode adaptation of the novel The Haunting of Hill House that will also debut on Netflix.