Hollywood will never get tired of exploiting the works of author Stephen King, but in recent months there’s been a great resurgence of interest in turning his novels into film and television properties. First Jonathan Demme, the Oscar-winning director of The Silence of the Lambs, options King’s newest novel 11/22/63 as a potential feature film. Then Warner Bros. begins developing the author’s epic horror-fantasy The Stand into a big-screen adaptation with Ben Affleck possibly calling the shots behind the camera. Most recently came the news that King’s 2009 supernatural horror novel Under the Dome was being turned into an original drama series at Showtime with acclaimed Lost writer and comics scribe Brian K. Vaughan (Y: The Last Man) writing the adaptation.

Now King’s 1996 fantasy novel Rose Madder has become his latest work to be earmarked for the celluloid treatment.

Independent film financiers Palomar Pictures and Grosvenor Park Productions are teaming up to produce a film version of the book with Naomi Sheridan (In America) writing the screenplay. The story revolves around a woman who escapes from her abusive husband and attempts to start a new life when she discovers she’s able to travel into a strange painting. Inside the painting she befriends a woman she names Rose Madder because of the color of the dress she wears. Meanwhile her psychotic husband is hot on her trail. The novel has several connections to King’s monumental Dark Tower series as well as his 1987 bestseller Misery. In his terrific 2000 memoir, On Writing, King referred to Rose Madder as one of his “stiff, trying-too-hard novels.”

The film is scheduled to go into production within the next 18 months.

[Source: Variety]