Los Angeles, Oct 9 (IANS) Filmmaker Mike Flanagan, who is receiving a lot of positive response to his recently released miniseries ‘Carrie’, has opened up on his process to craft the miniseries.
The filmmaker spoke with IANS during the promotions of the series, and said that the process involved a lot of documentation, and a lot of back and forth. The series is based on author Stephen King’s eponymous novel.
He told IANS, “I laid the whole thing out. And I sent him a document that had the whole season written out. And he read it and he came back and he said, ‘Actually, this is very exciting’”.
He further mentioned, “And he had a bunch of questions. He said, ‘Oh, well, what about this character? What are we going to do with this? And this is all new’. That’s kind of it. It’s a whole new thing. And then he got excited and he wanted to do it. And once he was excited, then I said, ‘Yep, we’ll go ahead and do this’”.
The series follows the socially isolated teenager as she navigates high school, bullying and the oppressive influence of her mother, Margaret, while discovering her telekinetic abilities. Flanagan updates the story for the social-media era, bringing cyberbullying, online humiliation and modern teenage pressures into the narrative.
Earlier, the filmmaker had shared that the team had screened for 1400 actors before they locked the casting for the titular role with Summer H. Howell. He said that the makers were intrigued by Summer’s ability to pull off the character considerably, who is younger to her in age.
He earlier told IANS, “Oh, well, this is the amazing thing about Summer. So we looked at 1400 actors to find Summer. It is a huge, huge casting. And Summer plays a 15 year old so convincingly that even I would look at her and think that it’s like, yes, this is a teenager. Summer is a 22 year old woman. So, all of the tricks that I would typically use with younger actors, not at all necessary with Summer. So she would show me very often how the scene would need to go. Summer is so incredible”.
The series expands several characters and explores the psychological roots of cruelty, victimhood and revenge more deeply than earlier adaptations. While Brian De Palma’s 1976 film remains the iconic version, the series format gives the story considerably more room to explore its characters and themes.
The series is available to stream on Prime Video.
–IANS
aa/