'Sleeping Beauties' Series Will Awaken Owen And Stephen King's Novel For AMC

AMC wants to stay in the Stephen King offspring business. The network will debut NOS4A2, based on the novel by King's son Joe Hill, this year. And now, they've ordered a pilot based on Sleeping Beauties, a book King penned with his son Owen King. Owen King has been tasked with writing the pilot script, which will hopefully lead to an open ended TV series. The novel is set in a women's prison in the midst of a strange event that causes all the women on the planet to suddenly fall asleep.

Deadline broke the news about the potential Sleeping Beauties series. Owen King will write the pilot, while Michael Sugar and Ashley Zalta will produce. Should AMC go ahead with the series, it will be the second show of theirs inspired by one of Stephen King's children – the other being Joe Hill's NOS4A2, due to premiere in June.Sleeping Beauties has the added bonus of having Stephen King's name attached to the source material, which is gold these days as far as producers are concerned. King adaptations continue to be all the rage, and while the recent Pet Sematary wasn't a blockbuster, it did have the second-highest opening weekend of any King adaptation to date, which shows that Stephen King adaptation fatigue has yet to set in.

Published in 2017, Sleeping Beauties marked the first time the elder King had collaborated with son Owen. Here's the novel's synopsis:

In a future so real and near it might be now, something happens when women go to sleep: they become shrouded in a cocoon-like gauze. If they are awakened, if the gauze wrapping their bodies is disturbed or violated, the women become feral and spectacularly violent. And while they sleep they go to another place, a better place, where harmony prevails and conflict is rare. One woman, the mysterious "Eve Black," is immune to the blessing or curse of the sleeping disease. Is Eve a medical anomaly to be studied? Or is she a demon who must be slain?

Abandoned, left to their increasingly primal urges, the men divide into warring factions, some wanted to kill Eve, some to save her. Others exploit the chaos to wreak their own vengeance on new enemies. All turn to violence in a suddenly all-male world.

"Owen and Stephen King found the perfect canvas to tell a haunting and gripping story that sparks a relevant conversation about gender equality and individuality," said producer Ashley Zalta. "We couldn't be more excited about this collaboration with the Kings and with AMC, who have so often boldly redefined genres."

Stephen King added: "I'm tremendously excited to see Sleeping Beauties brought to life in a format that will allow the story to be told as it was meant to be told, in all its mystery and drama."

All of this sounds genuinely interesting, especially since the series intends to explore deeper issues than just on-the-surface scares. While I'm /Film's resident Stephen King expert, I've yet to read Sleeping Beauties, so I should probably get around to that at some point.