Mike Flanagan isn’t thinking about Carrie as a one-and-done story. The filmmaker behind The Haunting of Hill House, Midnight Mass, Doctor Sleep, and The Fall of the House of Usher has revealed that he has a three-season plan in mind for his new Carrie show, which brings Stephen King’s classic horror story to life as a TV series for the first time.
That doesn’t mean Prime Video has ordered three seasons. The streamer currently has the first season, consisting of eight episodes, arriving on October 7. But if Flanagan gets his way, Carrie could become a three-season story.
“In my dream scenario, I think it’s three seasons,” Flanagan said in a new interview with Collider at the Toronto International Film Festival. “I think Carrie has a wonderful three-step arc. It’s a trilogy, really.”
That’s an intriguing statement considering how familiar the basic story of Carrie is, but Flanagan has already made it clear that he isn’t interested in just remaking what Brian De Palma did with his classic 1976 adaptation of the concept.
Flanagan was asked about the long-term roadmap for Carrie and what the ideal number of seasons would be if he could snap his fingers and make it happen. His answer was three.
The filmmaker emphasized that the team has been focused on making the first season work rather than planning too far ahead. He said they put all their energy into making sure this first season works and didn’t allow themselves to spend too much time thinking beyond it. Now that the series is finished, however, Flanagan admitted that he has a larger vision for where the story could go.
For now, Flanagan isn’t revealing anything about the potential three-season structure. He didn’t explain what each season would cover.
The story of Carrie has already been adapted several times, most famously in Brian De Palma’s 1976 film starring Sissy Spacek. There was also a 2002 television movie starring Angela Bettis and the 2013 feature starring Chloë Grace Moretz. Flanagan believes there’s little point in making yet another version of Carrie unless he can bring something new to the material. His series uses the longer television format to expand King’s story and its characters, while bringing Carrie White into the modern world.
Summer H. Howell stars as Carrie, a sheltered teenager who enters the world of public high school following the death of her father. She has spent most of her life isolated by her mother, Margaret, and suddenly has to deal with school, bullying, social media, and the emergence of her telekinetic abilities.
Prime Video describes the series as a story about kindness versus cruelty and the making of a hero, a monster, or something more complicated. All eight episodes of the first season will premiere on October 7.
So if the first season is designed to expand the world surrounding Carrie, building toward the famous prom sequence, what happens if Flanagan gets two more seasons to continue expanding that world?
Stephen King serves as an executive producer on the Prime Video series, alongside Flanagan. Flanagan has also spoken about being able to ask King for his thoughts as he explores parts of the Carrie universe that the original novel only hints at.
That’s the big question. For now, Prime Video has confirmed only the eight-episode first season of Carrie. Flanagan himself seems perfectly aware that a three-season plan means nothing unless audiences actually want to keep watching. He stressed that the team is currently focused on getting through the launch and seeing how the show is received.
That means viewers shouldn’t go into the first season expecting Prime Video to have already committed to a trilogy, but it’s interesting to know that Flanagan has one in mind.
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