Set to release on October 10, Peacock’s new horror series Teacup has a lot of buzz surrounding it, and rightfully so. It’s the first time one of author Robert McCammon’s novels is being adapted for television, something his fans have been clamoring for since the 1980s. Set on an isolated ranch in rural Georgia, the story takes inspiration from the book Stinger, and follows a disparate group of people who must come together to face a mysterious threat. Produced in part by James Wan, Teacup recently received high praise from someone who knows a thing or two about adaptations, that being Stephen King, who compared it to a couple of other fan-favorite series, which bodes well for McCammon’s translation.
Taking to his X account to give some brief thoughts on Teacup, King sent out a post to his more than 7 million followers, comparing it to shows like LOST and FROM, two notable series that feature an ensemble cast that are placed in an extraordinary situation they have to work themselves free from. Both have received widespread critical acclaim (despite LOST getting slammed over the years by fans for its ending), with the latter being heralded as one of the best TV shows in recent memory. In addition to the comparisons, King also called Teacup a “creepy” and “claustrophobic” series that’s “all killer, no filler.” Check out his full post below.
TEACUP: If you like FROM or LOST, I think you’ll enjoy this. It’s strange, creepy, claustrophobic, and scary. Beware the Gas Mask Man. Short episodes. All killer, no filler. (Peacock–bows October 10th)
Teacup Won’t Be a Faithful Adaptation of Robert McCammon’s Novel
Published in 1988, McCammon’s novel Stinger is a giant tome that sits at more than 600 pages. Covering a breadth of themes which include the resilience of the human spirit, xenophobia, class warfare, and old-fashioned good vs. evil, it takes place on a grand scale, featuring a plethora of locations and characters. As such, it’s an almost impossible novel to adapt for television, so fans looking for a beat-for-beat translation had better look elsewhere, because you’re not going to find it here.
Teacup’s creator Ian McCulloch – who also serves as showrunner – says all that’s by design. Speaking with Bloody Disgusting last month, he mused that a simple adaptation wasn’t something that interested him, so if Universal and James Wan wanted him to come aboard the project, they had to be prepared for a version that was “going to be 99.8% different from the book.”
“I didn’t want to do a direct adaptation word for word. It’s not interesting to me. The book exists; it’s there. I don’t know if you have read the book or know, but it’s big. It’s what I would call maximalist horror […] That’s not what I do. I said, ‘Well, what if we made it a minimalist?’ If we take everything out of it, does the idea still hold up? It’s like when you take a big song, and then they do an acoustic version. If it’s still good, it’s a good song.
“I said, ‘What if you take the town out of it? What if you take seeing anything out of it?’ Everything we’ve done with the show since we started, which was two or three years ago, is less is more, less is more, less is more. It’s like once you show the shark in
Jaws
, you can’t unshow it. So it was like, how do we do it without showing anything? How do we do it without it being a town? How do we do it?”
You can find out for yourself how he did when the first two episodes of Teacup premiere on Peacock starting October 10, with an additional two episodes released each week until its conclusion on October 31.