Stephen King’s The Revelations Of Becka Paulson TV Series In The Works At The CW

The CW is getting into the Stephen King business, because if you haven’t noticed, business is booming. The network is officially developing a new TV series that currently has the working title of Revelations according to Deadline. It will be based on the Stephen King short story “The Revelations of ‘Becka Paulson” and has Last Man Standing writer Maisie Culver set to pen the pilot script. The logline for the series reads: “After accidentally shooting herself in the brain with a nail gun, a Pollyanna-ish Becca Paulson is recruited by an over-it Jesus to be his ‘chosen one’ in stopping the apocalypse. In order to save the world, Becca will have to prove that our deeply backward planet Earth is redeemable — starting with her quirky midwestern hometown.”

This hopeful interpretation of the story seems pretty different from the initial concept. In the original version, Paulson gets shot in the head with an actual gun. After not dying from the bullet wound, a photo of Jesus begins to speak with her and tell her about her husbands infidelity, resulting in her plotting deadly vengeance against him. Almost the polar opposite of what The CW intends to do with the story. Culver will executive produce the series along with Katie Lovejoy (Dead Inside) and Warner Bros. Television.

That this short by King would be adapted is a bit of a surprise as it was originally published in a 1984 issue of Rolling Stone and hasn’t been collected in a book with King’s other stories, appearing only in a 1991 compilation titled “I Shudder at Your Touch.” It was previously adapted into an episode of The Outer Limits with none other than Catherine O’Hara and later reworked by King into a subplot of his novel The Tommyknockers.

This marks the latest development deal from a work by King, fresh off the announcement that his novella collection If It Bleeds had been split up and sold off piecemeal to various studios and interested producers. Netflix, Blumhouse and Ryan Murphy are teaming up to adapt the story Mr. Harrigan’s Phone with John Lee Hancock (The Highwaymen) set to write and direct. The story Rat has been picked up by Ben Stiller who will apparently produce, direct, and star in the film. Furthermore the story The Life Of Chuck has been picked up by Darren Aronofsky’s Protozoa, currently only attached to produce the adaptation. The titular “If It Bleeds” from the collection could also go on to be the basis of a second season of HBO’s The Outsider.

(Cover Photo by Scott Eisen/Getty Images for Warner Bros.)