Television

HBO’s Stephen King Series THE OUTSIDER Gets A Spooky First Trailer

by Lindsey Romain
Oct 17 2019 • 12:41 PM

How many times can we say we’re living in the Golden Age of Stephen King adaptations? It’s not exactly a sentiment that’s going out of style. CBS All Access is developing a TV miniseries based on The Stand with an impressive all-star cast. Mike Flanagan’s Doctor Sleep, a movie sequel to The Shining, hits theaters next month. It: Chapter Two was a huge success this summer. And it seems like there’s really just a never-ending parade of new King adaptation announcements, to the point that it’s hard to keep track of all of them. Not that we’re complaining; there’s a reason King is known as the horror master, because he’s stocked with ideas that continue to frighten generation after generation.

One upcoming project that’s captured our interest is the HBO adaptation of one of King’s more recent novels, The Outsider. The book is getting a 10-episode adaptation and stars fan favorite Ben Mendelsohn in a lead role. But what’s it about? The first trailer just dropped, and—as you might imagine—it looks very sinister and spooky.

In The Outsider, Jason Bateman plays a character named Terry Maitland, a Georgia family man who coaches Little League and is by all accounts your average neighborhood guy. That is, until he’s arrested for the murder of an 11-year-old boy named Frankie Peterson, after his fingerprints and DNA are found at the scene of the crime. Maitland has an alibi, but the evidence is too profound to deny, and the case seems like a done deal. But soon new details emerge that show that something more mysterious is going on, and this isn’t some run of the mill murder. It’s a Stephen King story, after all—where nothing is ever quite what it seems.

Mendelsohn stars as Detective Ralph Anderson, who’s tasked with digging into the case, and Cynthia Erivo plays a private investigator named Holly Gibney, who also gets involved. King fans will recognize that character name: Gibney is also a key player in the novel Mr. Mercedes. (Which has also been adapted into a TV series on the Audience network, where Succession‘s Justine Lupe plays Gibney.) The whole cast is stacked, with Julianne Nicholson, Mare Winningham, Bill Camp, Yul Vázquez, Jeremy Bobb, and Marc Menchaca rounding out the cast.

The behind-the-scenes talent isn’t too shabby either. Recent Emmy-winner Bateman is executive producing, alongside Richard Price, who also wrote the teleplay. Price is known for his work on series like The Wire, The Night Of, and The Deuce, and for his novels The Wanderers, Clockers, and Lush Life. That’s a pretty good pedigree, which goes nicely with the HBO of it all. We won’t be surprised if The Outsider breaks away from its horror genre trappings and becomes a critical darling. With talent like that backing it up, it seems destined for some awards recognition down the line.

Luckily, we don’t have too long to wait to see how this all comes together. The Outsider is set to debut on HBO on January 12, 2020.

Featured Image: HBO