Spike TV’s The Mist creator pitched the series as Ingmar Bergman’s Jaws

Last Updated on August 2, 2021

“I pitched it as ‘Ingmar Bergman’s Jaws’”.

Yesterday, we were hit with the trailer for Spike TV's upcoming 10-episode adaptation of Stephen King's THE MIST. Today we bring you excerpts from an interview the show's creator Christian Torpe conducted with EW, where he dropped the above, soon-to-be-famous line about the series being a mixture of Ingmar Bergman and Steven Spielberg's JAWS.

Interesting combination… Torpe was talking about how, for him, THE MIST is a psychological thriller, with monsters thrown in to stir emotions.

I wanted to be respectful to the source material, but my feeling was there was already a great adaptation out there by Frank Darabont. The novella is 200 pages and one location, and we needed to change that to make an ongoing series. But we wanted to remain faithful to the heart of the story."

Torpe then speaks a bit about the series being spread out over several locations this time around (not just one grocery store), with the new locations including a church and a mall where hundreds have holed up against the monsters.

But we are not just in the mall. We establish different little pressure cookers under the influence of whoever the leader would be in those locations. Each of them come up with different theories or beliefs about what’s going on. Eventually, the story lines will dovetail and turn into conflicts.”

He also dropped this interesting bit about the current state of fear in the world being reflected in the series:

Unfortunately, I thought it was incredibly timely to do a show about what people do when they are blinded by fear. We look around at what’s going on in the world, and everyone is constantly looking for someone to blame, or someone to lead them to the promised land. They find people to hate, either because of their gender or race or faith. Those are elements we tap into — how fear drives things like misogyny and homophobia.”

Overall I'm liking what I'm seeing/hearing about the upcoming THE MIST series. I think the trailer looked great and Thorpe's above comments make me think the man has his head set in the right direction concerning what's really to be feared once the mist rolls into town.

You can read EW's full interview with Christian Torpe OVER HERE.

The Mist premieres on Spike Thursday, June 22.