Hulu’s anthology series Castle Rock from J.J. Abrams and Stephen King will be putting a new spin on King’s classic story Misery, with Emmy nominee Lizzy Caplan (Masters of Sex) set to take on Kathy Bates’ iconic role of Annie Wilkes, The Hollywood Reporter has confirmed.
Caplan will be joined by Oscar winner Tim Robbins (Mystic River, The Shawshank Redemption), Elsie Fisher (Eighth Grade), Garrett Hedlund (Tron), Barkhad Abdi (Blade Runner 2049), Yusra Warsama (Call the Midwife), and Matthew Alan (13 Reasons Why).
Castle Rock Season 2 will explore a feud between warring clans that comes to a boil when budding psychopath Annie Wilkes (Caplan), King’s nurse from hell, gets waylaid in Castle Rock.
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Robbins will play Reginald “Pop” Merrill, the famed patriarch of King’s iconic crime family who is dying of cancer and at a reckoning with his family. Hedlund will play John “Ace” Merrill, the town of Castle Rock’s legendary bully who is taking over his uncle Po’s business and threatening a fragile peace with nearby Jerusalem’s Lot. Alan will portray Chris Merrill, Pop’s nephew and Ace’s brother who struggles to keep the peace between the Merrills and the Somali community.
Warsama will play Dr. Nadia Omar, the Harvard-trained Somali medical director of a rural hospital in Jerusalem’s Lot whose rational and scientific mind will be put to the test. Abdi will play Abdi Omar, Nadia’s tough, older brother who leads the charge to build a Somali community center that will deepen the roots of his people in Maine.
Fisher will play Joy, Annie’s home-schooled teenage daughter who is starting to have questions about her mother’s sanity. Caplan takes on Kathy Bates’ iconic Misery role of Annie Wilkes, a nurse and superfan battling to overcome mental health issues in Castle Rock.
Robbins’ “Pop” Merrill was featured in King’s novella The Sun Dog, published in his 1990 collection Four Past Midnight. That story was set in the town of Castle Rock, where the Hulu anthology takes place. “Ace” Merrill (played by Hedlund) was featured in King’s 1991 horror novel Needful Things, and perhaps most famously by Kiefer Sutherland in Stand By Me.
It has not been confirmed if any of the Castle Rock Season 1 cast members could return for the second season. Season 2 features a new storyline as showrunners Dustin Thomason and Sam Shaw intend to tell a complete story for each installment of the anthology.
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A psychological-horror series set in the Stephen King multiverse, Castle Rock combines the mythological scale and intimate character storytelling of King’s best-loved works, weaving an epic saga of darkness and light, played out on a few square miles of Maine woodland. The fictional Maine town of Castle Rock has figured prominently in King’s literary career: Cujo, The Dark Half, IT and Needful Things, as well as novella The Body and numerous short stories such as Rita Hayworth and The Shawshank Redemption are either set there or contain references to Castle Rock. Castle Rock is an original suspense/thriller — a first-of-its-kind reimagining that explores the themes and worlds uniting the entire King canon, while brushing up against some of his most iconic and beloved stories.
The first season of the series stars André Holland (Moonlight), Melanie Lynskey (Togetherness), Sissy Spacek (Carrie), Bill Skarsgård (IT), Jane Levy (Don’t Breathe) and Scott Glenn (Daredevil).
Shaw & Thomason developed the project for television and serve as executive producers along with J.J. Abrams, Ben Stephenson, and Liz Glotzer. Castle Rock is from Bad Robot Productions in association with Warner Bros. Television.
(Photo Credit: Getty Images)
