Hey there Horror fans, as you all may remember, back in 2008 I was granted the rights by famous horror author Stephen King to adapt his short story 'Cain Rose Up' from his short story collection Skeleton Crew. I tried unsuccessfully for a couple of years to raise a minuscule budget to make that short film a reality, unfortunately I was unable to raise enough funding and the project ended up never leaving the launch pad.
Since then, at least two other Directors around the world have also gotten rights from Mr. King to adapt the story, and both of those adaptation ended up getting produced. I kept my rough script secret all this time, showing it only to a handful of people, I have now decided it's time to share it with you all since it is the only glimpse that will ever exist into my adaptation of the story. Keep in mind the script was a rough draft, and actually is missing some really cool ideas that I had planned but weren't yet incorporated into the script, one good example is I wanted the film to end with the sounds of Kurt shooting, people screaming and police sirens in the distance as the camera panned over to Kurt's open bible which was open to a passage that read "Thou Shall Not Kill" which is splattered in blood and brain matter as Kurt commits suicide just before the screen fades to black and the credit rolls.
'Cain Rose Up' has always been one of my favorite King short stories, I guess because it is was ahead of it's time and essentially predicted the school shooting s across the country in the late 90's, the story was written 20 years or more before the Columbine shootings. I also like that it touches (as do several King stories) on the subject of religious extremism, and shows as history has, how ones warped interpretation of religious teachings can result in murderous and self destructive behavior. Both of these subjects are very timely with the Islamic religious extremism that threatens the Western world at the moment, and of course as I mentioned with the school shootings that have occurred across the country over the past decade. With my adaptation of King's story I wanted to stay as true to King's story as possible, sometimes I even used dialogue verbatim, but to bring a contemporary setting rather than doing a 1970's period piece as the original story.
Though this project never came to fruition, hopefully you all can gain a little insight into my version of the story in this rough draft for my adaptation. You can download the script HERE for a limited time. Enjoy!
Here is the old teaser trailer I had created for it during the campaign:
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