Jonathan Demme Adapting Stephen King's JFK Assassination Story, “11/22/63”

Stephen King is making bank this week. One minute, 1978's "The Stand" is being adapted by David Yates and Steve Kloves, the next King's book about JFK, which isn't even out yet, is being adapted by Jonathan Demme.

Demme will bring King's "11/22/63" to the big screen, reported Variety. The book tells the story of Jack Epping, a man from Maine (natch) who goes back in time in an effort to stop the assassination of President Kennedy. Here's the synopsis from King's site:

Jake Epping is a thirty-five-year-old high school English teacher in Lisbon Falls, Maine, who makes extra money teaching adults in the GED program. He receives an essay from one of the students—a gruesome, harrowing first person story about the night 50 years ago when Harry Dunning’s father came home and killed his mother, his sister, and his brother with a hammer. Harry escaped with a smashed leg, as evidenced by his crooked walk.

Not much later, Jake’s friend Al, who runs the local diner, divulges a secret: his storeroom is a portal to 1958. He enlists Jake on an insane—and insanely possible—mission to try to prevent the Kennedy assassination. So begins Jake’s new life as George Amberson and his new world of Elvis and JFK, of big American cars and sock hops, of a troubled loner named Lee Harvey Oswald and a beautiful high school librarian named Sadie Dunhill, who becomes the love of Jake’s life—a life that transgresses all the normal rules of time.

There's definitely echoes of King's "Dead Zone", in which a teacher's ability to see the future reveals to him that a presidential candidate will launch a horrifyingly destructive wear if elected and our hero must decide if it's morally acceptable to murder someone if they knew it would be for the greater good. In any event, it's a fun exercise.

Shooting on "11/22/63" starts in the fall of 2012.

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