Stephen King’s Under the Dome Heads to Showtime

Stephen King's Under the Dome
Stephen King's 'Under the Dome' - © Simon and Schuster

The multi-layered deal to bring Stephen King’s Dark Tower books alive as feature films and a TV series has stalled out (Universal balked over the production costs), but Showtime’s ready to get busy on a series based on another King novel: Under the Dome. Variety reports King, Steven Spielberg and DreamWorks TV are teaming up with Showtime to develop a series based on the 2009 bestseller.
 
Variety says Showtime’s now looking for someone to adapt King’s Under the Dome.
 
DreamWorks TV debuted the alien invasion series Falling Skies this past summer and has Terra Nova (with dinosaurs, debuting in September) and The River in the works.
 
Under the Dome Plot [courtesy of Stephen King’s official site]:
 
On an entirely normal, beautiful fall day in Chester’s Mill, Maine, the town is inexplicably and suddenly sealed off from the rest of the world by an invisible force field. Planes crash into it and fall from the sky in flaming wreckage, a gardener’s hand is severed as “the dome” comes down on it, people running errands in the neighboring town are divided from their families, and cars explode on impact. No one can fathom what this barrier is, where it came from, and when—or if—it will go away.
 
Dale Barbara, Iraq vet and now a short-order cook, finds himself teamed with a few intrepid citizens—town newspaper owner Julia Shumway, a physician’s assistant at the hospital, a selectwoman, and three brave kids. Against them stands Big Jim Rennie, a politician who will stop at nothing—even murder—to hold the reins of power, and his son, who is keeping a horrible secret in a dark pantry. But their main adversary is the Dome itself. Because time isn’t just short. It’s running out.