Spooky season is here at last, and the latest take on Stephen King’s 1975 vampire novel Salem’s Lot is finally being invited into homes thanks to its new release on Max. io9 got a chance to talk to writer-director Gary Dauberman—a fixture in the horror realm thanks to his extensive experience in the Conjuring Universe (especially the Annabelle and Nun series), as well as his screenplays for It and It Chapter Two — about how he approaches adaptations, his love of drive-in movie theaters, what he’s working on next, and more. Cheryl Eddy, io9: Salem’s Lot was originally meant to be a theatrical release.
What was it like from your point of view, the journey that brought it to finally becoming a streaming release on Max? Gary Dauberman: It’s like being a passenger in a car where you’re blindfolded and you don’t know where the destination is, and it feels like you could hit a wall any minute. And the car was on a bumpy road. I’m glad people can see it finally, [but] that’s kind of how it felt—fraught with anxiety and fear and frustration.
io9: The original book is doorstop-sized. What was your criteria for deciding what elements you wanted to carry over from the book, and which ones you wanted to alter and make your own? Dauberman: As you said, the book’s really dense in a great way. One of my favorite things about King is how he populates his towns, whether it’s Castle Rock or Derry or Jerusalem’s Lot, with very real characters, and everybody feels li.