Imagine having the power to visit the past and change history. In the mind of Stephen King, time travel is easier than you might think – all you need is a secret portal to the pantry of your local diner.
It sounds too good to be true – and sure enough, as always in his fiction, there is a catch. It turns out that when you try to control the past, it fights back – with a frightful vengeance.
To find out how, you won't want to miss the eight-part event series 11.22.63 – the title refers to November 22, 1963, the date on which US president John F Kennedy was assassinated – a TV adaptation of King's 2011 best-selling sci-fi novel of the same name. Produced by video-streaming service Hulu, it begins on Thursday on OSN First.
James Franco stars as high-school teacher Jake Epping, who sets himself an unthinkable mission: travel back in time to prevent the assassination. But to do that, he must first create a life for himself in the past to solve perhaps the greatest mystery of the 20th century – who killed JFK? Was it lone gunman Lee Harvey Oswald or was there a wider conspiracy?
Even if he manages to solve that mystery, can the killing be prevented? Epping soon discovers that the past does not want to be changed and will fight any attempt to do so.
With King and the ubiquitous J J Abrams on board as executive producers, the anticipation that has been building for this series has been scary. King's string of multimillion-selling novels and awards speak for themselves, while Abrams's creative involvement in TV (Lost, Alias, Fringe) and movies (Star Trek, Star Wars, Cloverfield, Mission: Impossible) has made him one of Hollywood's hottest properties.
Franco fell in love with King's novel when it was published – he tried to option the rights from the author to produce it himself, but King decided to court Abrams, sending the Force Awakens director a signed copy of the book to spark his interest.
“I love JJ Abrams as much as the next person but come on – that guy gets to do everything,” Franco wrote at the time, venting his frustration in a post on the Vice arts news website.
As it turns out, however, Abrams did not need much convincing.
“This is a book that I had loved long before Stephen King reached out and asked if I’d be interested in getting involved to produce,” says Abrams. “We did go out to a number of places and had some offers, but the enthusiasm [at Hulu] was clear and it matched ours.”
Even though JFK was killed 15 years before Franco was born, the event still resonates with the 37-year-old actor.
“It’s a big event but it’s sort of become, in a weird way, a legend for my generation,” he says. “It feels like Marilyn Monroe or James Dean, when in fact it was this horrific event.
"I thought this story and this approach were so great because it's a fresh way in. We're not exactly telling a history lesson. With Jake Epping, you have a new 'in' to the story. You get to learn everything all over again but from a completely fresh perspective we haven't seen before. It's a way to guide a new generation into what happened." Franco first found fame on Judd Apatow's cult television comedy-drama Freaks and Geeks in 1999, and went on to win a Golden Globe in the title role of the 2001 TV movie James Dean.
On the big screen, he appeared as Harry Osborn in Sam Raimi's Spider-Man trilogy, and in Pineapple Express, 127 Hours (for which he received an Academy Award nomination in 2010), Oz the Great and Powerful and This is the End.
Translating a hefty novel to the screen can require changes and cuts that might alienate fans of the source material. Leading the adaptation was executive producer Bridget Carpenter (Parenthood, Friday Night Lights), who opted to expand the role of one of the characters – played by Daniel Webber, a star of Aussie soap opera Home and Away – into more of a companion for Franco's Jake in the past.
“I think that people who loved the book will be very satisfied, and if you didn’t read the book you’ll be able to experience this dramatically, fantastically,” says Carpenter.
Also in the cast are Oscar winner Chris Cooper (American Beauty, Adaptation), as the diner owner who becomes Jake's time-travel mentor, Sarah Gadon as Sadie Dunhill, a woman to whom Jake grows close in the past.
In the end, the decision to adapt 11.22.63 was a no-brainer, says Abrams: "We knew we had something incredibly special."
• 11.22.63 begins at 11pm on Thursday on OSN First
artslife@thenational.ae
