The good folks over at Rue Morgue recently sat down with Hush director Mike Flanagan, at which point they asked the filmmaker if he had any updates about his long-gestating adaptation of Stephen King's Gerald's Game. Y'know, the one with the lady handcuffed to a bed for 300 pages?

Well, surprisingly enough, Flanagan did have an update. And even more surprisingly, it sounds like the project is moving ahead...on Netflix. Says Flanagan:

“If you know the source material, you’ll know there are a lot of challenges inherent in that story. Not so much the narrative challenges of how to adapt it; it took me 10 years of constantly thinking about the book to crack the cinematic version. But it’s a real challenge for financiers and distributors, who say, ‘Yeah, we love your work, we love Stephen King, but this story, this particular story? We don’t know how it works,’ without reshaping it to fit a much more conventional structure, which I did not want to do. And Netflix, because of how well Hush has done, said, ‘We’re really interested in this, and we’d like to do it the way you want to do it.’ And that eliminated the pressure of having to test-screen the movie and define the demographic that’s going to watch it—all of that stuff that typically comes into the conversation when you’re trying to figure out how to market a film for a wide theatrical release. It just cleared the table, so that I can make the movie I want to make. I’m hoping very much that we can get that movie up on its feet soon.”

Real talk? I never expected Gerald's Game to be turned into a movie. I'm not even entirely sure how you'd do it. The novel was conceived as something of a companion piece to King's Dolores Claiborne, and largely revolves around an unfortunate young woman named Jessie, who finds herself handcuffed naked to a bed after her husband has a heart attack mid-afternoon delight.

Most of the action unfolds in flashbacks, or inside Jessie's head, and gets downright gruesome before all things are said and done. I can imagine Gerald's Game working as a short, I guess, but a feature-length film? That's a tall order, and one that'll involve some finesse. According to Flanagan, they're hoping Stephen King will get involved, though...

"...that’s going to be entirely up to him. From what I’ve heard, sometimes he’s very involved when it comes to approvals and things like that, and sometimes he can be more hands-off. So I guess that remains to be seen. I would personally want him to be as involved as he possibly wants to be. And I think the more Stephen is involved, the more he’ll see the reverence that I have for this book. I would love for him to be part of this, and I hope he will be.”

Well, color me intrigued. As of right now, there's no further information on when Gerald's Game might start shooting or who might star in it (a courageous young actress, whoever it ends up being), but we'll keep you informed as updates roll in.