Jonathan Demme Options Film Rights to Stephen King JFK Assassination Novel

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Filmmaker Jonathan Demme has optioned the rights to Stephen King’s upcoming time-travel novel centering on the assassination of John F. Kennedy, 11/22/63.

The Oscar-winning filmmaker (The Silence of the Lambs) will write and direct as well as produce the adaptation.

The tome, all 1000-pages of it, is set to hit stores in November and centers on an English teacher who goes through a time portal in an effort to stop the Kennedy assassination. He finds himself dealing with luminaries ranging from Elvis to JFK and meets a high school librarian that becomes the love of his life.

Ilona Herzberg, who produced Demme’s last dramatic feature, Rachel Getting Married, is producing the project, which is not set up or financed. King will exec produce if the movie gets off the ground.

Decades after movies such as Carrie and The Shining, King remains as popular as ever in Hollywood, even if getting a movie to the screen has become harder than ever. Rumous swirled yesterday that David Yates and Steve Kloves were tackling The Stand while Ron Howard's ambitious adaptation of The Dark Tower was recently halted at Universal.

Demme is repped by WME.

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