adaptations

Stephen King’s Under the Dome Coming to CBS

Stephen King’s 2009 novel Under the Dome is finally coming to television, but not as originally planned: After spending more than a year in development at Showtime, the project is now headed to CBS, where it will launch as a thirteen-episode series next summer. Steven Spielberg’s recently revived Amblin Television is still producing, with Lost veteran Brian K. Vaughan writing and Niels Arden Oplev — director of the original Swedish version of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo — helming the first episode. Neal Baer (Law & Order: SVU) is producing as well, along with King. Showtime chief David Nevins was heavily involved with developing Dome, one of the first projects he acquired after taking over the network. Insiders say he ultimately decided the subject matter — small town in New England (duh!) finds itself sealed off from the rest of the world, much like the folks on CBS’s Big Brother — wasn’t Showtime-y enough. However, these sources say, Nevins believed the idea should stay within the CBS Corp. family and thus helped pitch it to sister net CBS. (Fun fact: Showtime’s The Tudors began life as an Eye drama script.) The green light for Dome comes just months after History scored monster ratings with its six-hour summer series Hatfields & McCoys, spurring a slew of frantic calls from broadcast execs to agents and producers demanding, “Get me a big summer event series, stat!” The CBS news also comes a few months after Fox announced plans to launch a big summer “limited series” by 2014.

Stephen King’s Under the Dome Coming to CBS