Would "Thinner" make a good TV series?

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Rrty

Well-Known Member
Jun 4, 2007
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I was thinking Thinner could be updated as a TV series. Could be a quality-programming thing, like what you might see on HBO or AMC. Of course, Netflix could also do it. But here's an idea of how to update it that might make it even appropriate for MTV (King should try to get an MTV project going to introduce younger readers to his bibliography).

Let's say Halleck is a college student, maybe law school. He is falsely accused of sexually assaulting a female student, along with other male colleagues of his. Each of them gets a text with one word on it. Halleck's text says thinner. He is overweight, and begins to drop the pounds. He has to figure out what's going on. Eventually, he finds it is the girl's father, who still believes the girl was really assaulted. He has to convince the father that it isn't true. To do so, he must figure out why the girl made the accusation in the first place, and what she wants.

This could also work with Halleck in high school, and in both cases, the issues of being overweight could be explored.

I could definitely see this as an MTV project, but obviously, this is just discussion-forum stuff. Be interesting to see the different curses that could happen, ones that might not be exactly like the book. Someone gets that premature-aging disease, someone is attacked by flesh-eating bacteria, maybe there are Final Destination-like accidents, etc.
 
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Rrty

Well-Known Member
Jun 4, 2007
1,394
4,588
In a sense, that's true, the deviation would be strong. But I think it still retains King's book's DNA. Unfortunately, updating anything requires changes. I agree that it would be great to do the adaptation in a more straightforward manner, but I'm not sure it would be as marketable if it were set in the 80s and done the same way. Plus the chance to explore how a high-school/college student deals with weight and peers would be very interesting. Given some of the shows MTV has been experimenting with such as Teen Wolf (which I think actually is past the experimental stage at this point, although I do not watch it), I think it would be an easy sell for King's agents (although again, this premise is written out merely for fun and not for any practical value). Wolf certainly was much different than the movie it was based on.