This article appears in the new issue of DEN OF GEEK magazine. Find out how you can subscribe to get the full physical copy right here!Mike Flanagan understands your skepticism when it comes to modern horror reboots. After all, the prolific horror auteur already had to address one notable genre fan’s qualms before embarking on Carrie, Prime Video’s TV miniseries based on the classic Stephen King novel. “I went to Stephen King and said, ‘We’re talking about doing Carrie. I of course won’t do it without your express blessing,’” recalls the TV showrunner and King aficionado. And King, ever the veteran of screen adaptations himself, was quick to ask the obvious question: why? It’s been done. “I said, ‘I know, but what if we make some pretty fundamental changes?’ I walked him through the proposal, and he got very excited.”cnx.cmd.push(function() {cnx({playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530",}).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796");});Few in Hollywood have a better understanding of why the industry feels compelled to return to the ghosts of horror past than Mike Flanagan, especially when it comes to King. After jump-scaring onto the scene with indie horror darlings like Oculus and Hush, the Salem-born writer/director became the go-to guy for any and all things King: from psychological thriller Gerald’s Game to the unlikely Shining sequel Doctor Sleep, and even the miraculously feel-good The Life of Chuck. But despite that impressive portfolio, adapting Carrie presents a much steeper challenge than your typical TV transfer. Originally released in 1974, Carrie was the soon-to-be legendary author’s first-ever published novel. It tells the story of Carietta “Carrie” White, a naïve 16-year-old girl dealing with an extreme mother, high school bullies, and her own burgeoning telekinetic powers. The book was adapted into the massively successful 1976 film directed by Brian De Palma and starring Sissy Spacek as the titular telekinetic firestarter. Several cinematic sequels and reboots followed, with the most recent offering being a 2013 remake starring Chloë Grace Moretz.That’s why when presented with the opportunity to reboot Carrie as part of his overall deal with Amazon MGM Studios, Flanagan initially balked before considering a fresh approach. The only way to remake Carrie was to remix it, he realized, in a similar fashion to Flanagan’s Netflix horror shows The Haunting of Hill House, The Haunting of Bly Manor, and The Fall of the House of Usher, which drastically updated the works of Shirley Jackson, Henry James, and Edgar Allan Poe, respectively. “The themes in Carrie about human cruelty and empathy feel more relevant today than they did 50 years ago,” Flanagan says. “So why not put those characters through the looking glass into these familiar but unfamiliar distortions of the characters we expect, and see what story grows out of that? That became a bit irresistible for me.”Finding Carrie WhiteMany of those distortions start with Carrie herself. While the TV iteration of the character is every bit as naïve as her literary counterpart, she’s also much more hopeful, optimistic, and bright. Following the death of her father Ralph at his construction job, Carrie is discovered by the state’s child protective services and forced to attend a public school for the first time in her life, an opportunity the secret bookworm cherishes. After an audition process that screened more than 1,400 young actors, Flanagan and casting director Anne McCarthy honed in on Summer H. Howell, a young actress with the ability to capture Carrie’s sense of wonderment at a modern world long kept hidden from her.“I’m a sensitive girl, and I like to use that when I can in my acting. Luckily, Carrie is sensitive as well,” Howell tells us. “She’s excited for the world and to experience things because she’s been kept in her home her whole life. So I connected with that a lot, just growing up and wanting to get out there as a teenager, so eager and wanting to experience new things.”In both King’s book and De Palma’s film—in which she’s played with intense religiosity by Piper Laurie—Carrie’s mother Margaret looms large over the White household and feels like the real locus of power in a story that features literal telekinetic powers. For Flanagan, the choice of who to embody the conspiracy-minded Margaret was among the easiest he had to make. “It was instant. It was: ‘We’re doing Carrie. Sam Sloyan is Margaret White.’ There was never another candidate for me.”A Flanagan collaborator since 2016’s Hush, Samantha Sloyan is best known for playing villainous church busybody Bev Keane in his 2021 Netflix series Midnight Mass. On paper, Bev and Margaret have much in common, including a penchant for bending religious doctrine toward their own selfish means. But according to Sloyan, there’s a key difference between the two.“Beverly has complete belief in what she says because she needs that authority. Margaret wants Carrie to love her, but she just keeps going. She expects to be able to behave the way that she’s behaving and still have the love and respect of her daughter, and she can’t have both.”Carrie and Margaret’s relationship forms the creative and emotional backbone of the proceedings as the pair lead a cast that’s a mix of high school characters (Siena Agudong, Alison Thornton, Joel Oulette) and the adults who supposedly have their best interests in mind (Matthew Lillard, Amber Midthunder, Rahul Kohli). The world of Carrie isn’t confined solely to Ewen High School, however. As Flanagan points out, King’s original text is explicit about the fact that Carrie isn’t the only person in the world to exhibit telekinetic abilities. The show explores some of the other carriers of the so-called “TK gene.”“There’s a much larger world that Carrie belongs to that she doesn’t know about,” Flanagan says. “I think one of the tragedies of King’s story is that she never finds out. We had a chance to change that. It also helps with one of the show’s biggest themes: a young woman discovering the legacy of the community to which she belongs. Our Carrie has been sequestered away from any community her whole life in an effort to protect her.” Mean GirlsMany of the other changes involved in remixing Carrie are simply inherent to taking a story from 1974 and updating it for 2026, especially when it comes to high school. Himself the father of three children, one of whom is a high school sophomore, Flanagan invited teenagers into the writers’ room to get their perspective of what a modern-day high school looks like. Their input helped inform the look and feel of the show’s high school set (filmed on location in a real, out-of-use high school in Vancouver)—from Gen Alpha lingo to metal detectors at the doors to intense active-shooter drills. The depiction of the lattermost moment is sure to be one of the series most horrifying scenes for anyone who has not yet witnessed someone posing as an armed intruder pointing a terrifyingly realistic gun in a child’s face. Not only has the previously home-schooled Carrie never experienced such a drill, but neither had the Canadian actor who portrays her. “That was one of the scenes I was most nervous for, actually, because I’ve never been in that situation,” Howell says. “It added this extra bit of pressure. We had certain drills when I was younger but nothing like somebody banging on the door and trying to scare the children.”And then there’s that damned internet. While Stephen King has always been known to craft a particularly vicious brand of literary bully, even Carrie’s tormentors had to clock out at the end of the day in 1974. Now social media makes the bullying of our nation’s youth a 24/7 proposition, as the miniseries’ iteration of Carrie discovers to her horror when frenemy Chris Hargensen (Alison Thornton) launches an “@CarrieRed_” Instagram handle full of compromising material. The profile photo of said account is a snapshot of Carrie’s pained face, amid an updated version of the original’s devastating locker room scene. When the undernourished 16-year-old experiences her first period in the locker room after gym class and believes she is injured or dying upon the sight of blood, her classmates, naturally, prove to be less than empathetic to her ignorance. The moment is not only a turning point for Carrie, her classmates, and her teachers, but for everyone else on set that day.“Mike does a really beautiful job of making sure we all pause and acknowledge what a big deal a moment is before it passes by,” says Amber Midthunder, who plays supportive gym teacher Rita Desjardin. “I mostly witnessed the locker room scene and what an intense day that was. I think it’s one of the most upsetting scenes I’ve ever experienced just because of the nature of it.”Of course, even a remixed version of Carrie wouldn’t be complete without the tale’s fiery prom finale. By now, the sight of Prom Queen Carrie White in a high school gymnasium, wide-eyed, vengeful, and covered in pig’s blood from a prank gone wrong is as American as apple pie and about as sticky. “I don’t know if I even want to know what’s in the blood,” Howell reports of the red concoction she was doused in. “I’d have to stand in the perfect spot, and they’d lower a tennis ball to my head to make sure it’s lined up. The blood knocked off my tiara once, and they were like, ‘Oh, we can’t use that one.’”Filmed over the span of two weeks, the bloody prom and its equally bloody aftermath serve as the union between the classic King version of Carrie and the blended elements that Flanagan seeks to incorporate. The series’ star didn’t fully appreciate that synthesis until seeing De Palma’s film for the first time at a special screening in Vancouver that the showrunner put together for the cast, crew, and locals. “It was the coolest way I could have seen the film, having just filmed a whole series based on it,” Howell says. “We capture the iconic moments, but just slightly differently because we have more time. Seeing the differences was very jarring but super cool. Sissy Spacek is clearly an incredible actor, and it’s hard to fill her shoes, but I hope I made her proud.”All eight episodes of Carrie are available to stream on Prime Video now.The post Carrie: Mike Flanagan Reveals How He Changed Stephen King’s Mind appeared first on Den of Geek.