The Hollywood Reporter has learned that Steven Spielberg has teamed with Stranger Things creators The Duffer Brothers for an upcoming series adaptation of Stephen King and Peter Straub's The Talisman for Netflix.
The 3x Academy Award-winning director/producer, who acquired the film rights outright and in perpetuity two years prior to it ever being published, has spent nearly thirty-five years trying to crack a screenplay for the classic fantasy-horror novel, but never made much progress until very recently.
The Duffer Brothers will serve as executive producers through their banner Monkey Massacre Productions on the series alongside Spielberg's Amblin Television and Paramount Television Studios.
The Talisman follows twelve-year-old Jack Sawyer who goes on a mystical journey to save his mother from terminal cancer with an artifact known as “the Talisman.” Jack’s search takes him from his home in New Hampshire throughout the heart of the United States, and into a perilous alternate universe called “the Territories.” The Territories are inhabited by duplicates, or “twinners,” of each person in the United States, whose lives mirror each other’s core features, such as birthdays and major emotional events.
The novel is followed by the 2001 sequel, Black House, which follows an adult Jack Sawyer. Both novels are very loosely connected to King's Dark Tower universe.