Blumhouse, Ryan Murphy Scream Team Up for Netflix Adaptation of Stephen King’s Mr. Harrigan’s Phone

Photo: John Lamparski/WireImage

If you aren’t already completely terrified of your phone, these guys are going to take care of that last little bit of goodwill. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Jason Blum’s prolific horror company Blumhouse and American Horror Story creator Ryan Murphy are collaborating on Netflix’s upcoming feature adaptation of Mr. Harrigan’s Phone, one of the four creepy novellas in Stephen King’s recent collection, If It Bleeds, published back in April.

The pair will reportedly produce, while filmmaker John Lee Hancock — known for penning Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, The Blind Side, and Snow White and the Huntsman, in addition to directing The Founder and Saving Mr. Banks — will write and direct. Blumhouse is also adapting a reboot of King’s Firestarter, with Drew Barrymore, star of the book’s 1984 movie adaptation, set to executive produce.

The movie will be Netflix’s fourth Stephen King feature adaptation, after 1922, Gerald’s Game, and In the Tall Grass. In case you haven’t been able to read Stephen King’s work as fast as the author can conjure it out of hell, Mr. Harrigan’s Phone follows Craig, a small-town Mainer who befriends the titular retiree as a child, eventually buying him his first iPhone. When Mr. Harrigan dies, Craig makes the critical mistake of calling his late friend’s number one last time to leave him a voicemail, a nice gesture if it wasn’t for the reply texts he starts receiving from beyond the grave. That cell-phone reception in Maine, it really cannot be beat.