Just like his older brother Joe Hill, Stephen King's youngest child Owen King has followed his parents into the literary world. Not only that, but Owen has (as Joe has done) also collaborated with his father – Stephen and Owen share author credit on the upcoming supernatural suspense novel Sleeping Beauties, which is based on a "dynamite idea" Owen brought to his dad.
Scribner won't be publishing Sleeping Beauties until September 26, 2017, but a bidding war has already erupted over the adaptation rights, with Anonymous Content coming out the victor. Anonymous will be working with the Kings to develop Sleeping Beauties into a television series.
Sleeping Beauties takes place in the near future in a small Appalachian town whose primary employer is a women’s prison. Something happens when women go to sleep; they become shrouded in a cocoon-like gauze. If they are awakened, if the gauze wrapping their bodies is disturbed or violated, the women become feral and spectacularly violent. And while they sleep they go to another place. Meanwhile, the men are abandoned, left to their increasingly primal devices. One woman, the mysterious Evie, is immune to the blessing or curse of the sleeping disease. Is Evie a medical anomaly to be studied? Or is she a demon who must be slain?
That very strange concept does seem to be something that could sustain a series, and with Orange Is the New Black being so popular in recent years, why not try to replicate that women's prison story success with some weird horror mixed in?
The Sleeping Beauties series will be executive produced by Michael Sugar and Ashley Zalta.
If you would like to pick up a copy of Sleeping Beauties before the TV show reaches the air, the book can currently be pre-ordered on Amazon.
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