Mike Flanagan Promises Horror Fans ‘The Mist’ Remake Is “Going In A Different Direction” From Frank Darabont Movie: “This Isn’t A Retread”

Earlier in the month, it was announced that “Doctor Sleep” director Mike Flanagan would be reuniting with Warner Bros. for a new feature adaptation of Stephen King‘s Lovecraftian survival thriller story “The Mist.” For fans of the original film from 2007 helmed by Frank Darabont (“Shawshank Redemption,” “The Walking Dead,” “The Green Mile”), it was a tad perplexing, but maybe folks got out their pitchforks a bit too soon.

The filmmaker took to BlueSky over the weekend to calm down naysayers, pointing out he’s doing something different with his version of the source material and isn’t looking to do something we’ve already seen.

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“I love Darabont’s film, and there’s zero point in remaking it. Which is why I’m going in a different direction…’The Mist’ is going to be great. If there wasn’t an excellent answer to ‘why,’ I wouldn’t do it…I learned a long ago never to try to predict what the fans will or won’t argue about (everybody needs to relax, frankly; I just saw a whole chain of people foaming at the mouth over fan-made AI slop posters for ‘The Exorcist’)… but yeah, this isn’t a retread. The differences start page 1,” Flanagan said in a slew of replies about his reasoning for attempting a remake of “The Mist.”

Flanagan stopped short of explaining what he’s planning on doing, but given that sleepy town setting, the events might move away from the group of townsfolk trapped in a supermarket. One of the elements of the story is the involvement of the U.S. military through “Project Arrowhead,” which is a secret military experiment conducted that creates a portal to other dimensions (an element from the world of Stephen King works that interconnects multiple stories, ala “The Dark Tower“) where the deadly insect-like creatures come from and by the end of the original film they have figured out how to combat them.

If we had to make an assumption here, tackling the sci-fi and military side of “The Mist” could be an excellent complementary narrative installment, without “remaking” or “retreading” the previous work from Darabont. In theory, horror fans could enjoy both versions of “The Mist” as they could occur at the same time in that universe, just focused on a new story and characters.

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That said, Flanagan is busy gearing up for a new installment set within “The Exorcist” franchise for Blumhouse/Universal Pictures that has Scarlett Johansson in a lead role and is expected to be his next feature effort to go into production.