| Stephen King's whopping new novel Under the Dome was only published a week ago, but plans are already afoot to develop it for the small screen. Steven Spielberg will executive produce, along with Stacey Snyder, Darryl Frank and Justin Falvey of Dreamworks TV, and King himself. The novel is a reworking of King's never-published "lost" work The Cannibals, in which the small Maine town of Chester's Mill is suddenly, inexplicably cut off by an invisible forcefield that doesn't allow exit or entry. Trapped inside, the society-in-microcosm starts to unravel. Yes, it sounds like The Simpsons Movie, but it's been hailed in some quarters as a return to old-school King after a gradual shift of direction and focus in recent years, and has drawn favourable comparisons to his much earlier end-of-the-world tome The Stand. King adaptations for TV have been a mixed bag. Tobe Hooper's Salem's Lot and the 1990 It, starring Tim Curry as stuff-of-lifelong-phobias Pennywise the clown, are probably the high points. The Stand itself didn't fare so well, and the less said the better about The Tommyknockers and King's own version of The Shining. So the Spielberg influence will be key, and with Band of Brothers and the upcoming The Pacific on his TV CV, there's every reason to be optimistic. It actually isn't the first time the two Steves have worked together, having sporadically collaborated on an as-yet-unrealised version of The Talisman. Let's hope this one doesn't similarly gather dust for twenty years. | 
