Stephen King Is Writing a New Apple Thriller Starring Julianne Moore

As we saw at the unveiling of its Apple TV+ service last month, Apple already has a pretty amazing collection of high-profile talent on board to product and star in its wide array of original content projects. The company’s media event featured a star-studded guest list that included everybody from Reese Witherspoon and Jennifer Aniston to Steven Spielberg and Oprah Winfrey.

However, there’s no sign that Apple is slowing down on trying to attract prominent writers and stars, and according to The Hollywood Reporter, the company’s latest coup is a new drama-thriller series that will be written by none other than legendary author Stephen King himself, while also starring Oscar-winning actress Julianne Moore and being produced by J.J. Abrams.

The series, titled Lisey’s Story, will be a limited eight-episode adaptation of Stephen King’s 2006 horror-romance novel of the same name. The story is described as a “deeply personal thriller” that follows the story of a widow named Lisey (played by Moore) who is forced to begin facing surprising and previously-repressed realities about her deceased husband. All eight episodes are being written by Stephen King, who very rarely writes for television.

Apple won the show after a multiple-outlet bidding war, however this is the third project that it will be working on with J.J. Abrams’ production company Bad Robot. Abrams took the stage at Apple’s March event with Sara Bareilles to talk about the half-hour comedy/drama Little Voice that Bareilles will be starring in, and the director/producer is also be behind the Jennifer Garner series My Glory Was I Had Such Friends.

In fact, with Abrams recent coziness with Apple and his contract with Warner Bros. TV about to expire, there have been rumours that Apple and Bad Robot could be signing an overall deal worth as much as $500 million, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Abrams and King have collaborated on projects before, including a limited series 11.22.63 for Hulu and the anthology Castle Rock, and King himself has recently been producing a growing number of his own TV series as well, but it still remains rare for the prolific author to actually leave traditional pen and paper in favour of the big screen.

The new series will also mark the first leading TV role for Julianne Moore, who is well-known for her work in film, with five Academy Award nominations and a win in 2015 for Still Alice. However, Moore has not been a regular on the smaller screen since her time on the soap opera, As The World Turns in the late eighties, although she did win an Emmy and a Golden Globe for her 2012 performance portraying Sarah Palin in HBO’s Game Change.

The new limited series will include Moore, King, and Abrams all as executive producers, along with Bad Robot’s head of television, Ben Stephenson. As usual, there’s no word on when we’ll actually see the results of these latest efforts, but Lisey’s Story is certainly another significant feather in Apple’s cap that will add to its existing slate of more than two dozen shows that are already in production, the first of which are expected to debut this fall when Apple’s TV+ service actually goes online.