‘Castle Rock’ Trailer for Super Bowl Released Online

Ahead of its planned premiere during the Super Bowl, Hulu has released the all-new trailer for the Stephen King-inspired series Castle Rock, which you can watch above. The spot also confirmed that the series will be debuting this summer.

The series combines the mythological scale and intimate character storytelling of King’s best-loved works, weaving an epic saga of darkness and light, played out on a few square miles of Maine woodland. The fictional Maine town of Castle Rock has figured prominently in King’s literary career: Cujo, The Dark Half, IT and Needful Things, as well as novella The Body and numerous short stories such as Rita Hayworth and The Shawshank Redemptionare either set there or contain references to Castle Rock. Castle Rock is an original suspense/thriller — a first-of-its-kind reimagining that explores the themes and worlds uniting the entire King canon, while brushing up against some of his most iconic and beloved stories.

Throughout King’s prolific career, he has regularly included Easter eggs into his works that tease connections between all of his various stories, yet the major characters in his books never seem to collide. Castle Rock sets to change all of that, focusing instead on the town itself instead of stories tangentially connected to the location.

Despite the focus on King’s characters, the author himself said he hasn’t been too involved in the series’ production.

“I’m as much in the dark as anybody else,” King confessed to Entertainment Weekly. “I don’t know anything about it so I just hope it turns out really well. It must be going okay. It’s typical J.J. [Abrams]. There’s been nothing that I’ve seen in the press, or anything, about it.”

The author might feel as though he’s in the dark about the upcoming series, but he also revealed that co-writing the novella Gwendy’s Button Box with Rich Chizmar reminded him of his passion for the fictional town that is often the epicenter of many of his stories.

“It kind of renewed my interest in Castle Rock. I hadn’t thought about that place in a long time, and I think Rich knew more about the backstory of the town than I did, but he got me interested in it,” King confessed. “Now I’ve written another novella called Elevation, which is also a Castle Rock story and, in some ways, it’s almost like a sequel to Gwendy. Sometimes you seed the ground, and you get a little fertilizer, and things turn out.”

King fans will have to be patient to see the series debut, as many of us had expected the series to premiere earlier in the year. Now it will potentially compete with the King TV series Mr. Mercedes, whose second season will premiere on AT&T’s Audience Network.

[H/T Deadline]