Salem’s Lot Reboot Will Reportedly Skip Theaters, Premiere on Max

After having no updates for the better part of a year, the latest take on Salem’s Lot may be gearing up for release. New reports suggest the Warners Bros. picture will be ditching its planned theatrical release for a debut on streaming instead. Though the studio has yet to confirm such a move, Variety says the Lewis Pullman vehicle is one of the few pictures the studio has in the can that will be able to make the jump to streaming. As the trade reports, the move isn’t indicative of quality but rather, a necessity given Max doesn’t have the film inventory available after this year’s strikes.

Based on the Stephen King novel bearing the same name, Salem’s Lot follows a writer named Ben Mears as he returns to his hometown, only to find it overrun by vampires.

“It’s a scary thing doing these remakes, man. It’s like, this and [Top Gun: Maverick], there’s such pressure, it’s a hard concoction to conjure up to make it successful,” Pullman previously told ComicBook.com about the film. “But Gary Dauberman, the director, is really keen on doing justice to the book. But also, the previous adaptation was a two-parter, because it’s such a hefty book and there are so many different moving parts and so many characters. So there are some parts where Gary had to press and find what was really at the heart of the movie to keep in, but for the most part, he’s really true to the book and keeping a lot of the original dialogue in there. He’s a Stephen King hound dog so he doesn’t wanna do Stephen dirty.” 

Pullman stars in the movie as lead character Ben Mears, who returns to his childhood home Jerusalem’s Lot while attempting to work on his next novel only to realize that a vampire has taken hold of the town. Makenzie Leigh (Gotham, The Assistant) as Susan Norton, Mears’ love interest and a helpful hand in the fight against the vampire; Bill Camp (Joker) as Matthew Burke, a local high school English teacher that reveals to Mears the evils of the Marsten House; and Spencer Treat Clark (Unbreakable) as Mike Ryerson, the local gravedigger who becomes one of the town’s vampires.

Salem’s Lot has yet to set a release date. The original two-part series can be rented wherever movies are sold.