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    "original_url": "https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/10\/06\/arts\/television\/carrie-amazon-prime-video-mike-flanagan.html?emc=edit_nn_20261007&nl=the-morning&segment_id=227657",
    "parsed_content": "What to Watch70 Movies This Fall\u2018Digger\u2019\u2018Verity\u2019\u2018NAZA\u2019\u2018Lady\u2019\u2018Primetime\u2019AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTSupported bySKIP ADVERTISEMENTWhat to Know About \u2018Carrie\u2019 Before Watching the New TV AdaptationThe novel, written over 50 years ago, has had several adaptations, not all of them good. A new series from Mike Flanagan has Stephen King\u2019s imprimatur.Listen \u00b7 6:10 min Share full articleSummer H. Howell plays the titular character in \u201cCarrie,\u201d which updates the setting of Stephen King\u2019s 1974 novel to contemporary times.Credit...Robert Falconer\/Amazon PrimeBy Robin RavenOct. 6, 2026See more of our coverage in your search results.Encuentra m\u00e1s de nuestra cobertura en los resultados de b\u00fasqueda. Add The New York Times on GoogleAgrega The New York Times en Google Stephen King\u2019s 1974 novel, \u201cCarrie,\u201d has been a paperback best seller, an Oscar-nominated film, a Broadway flop, a network TV movie and a big-screen remake. Now, a month before the 50th anniversary of Brian De Palma\u2019s 1976 film, comes the first series-length version, adapted and overseen by Mike Flanagan (\u201cThe Haunting of Hill House,\u201d \u201cMidnight Mass\u201d) with King as an executive producer.Flanagan, who updated the setting to contemporary times, has said that he is rebuilding the story rather than retelling it. And indeed some elements of his adaptation are new: Much has changed about teenage life since the 1970s, not least the advent of the internet and smartphones, which have added terrifying new dimensions to the eternal plagues of high school bullying and parental paranoia.The full eight-part series arrives on Wednesday, on Amazon Prime Video, starring Summer H. Howell as the titular telekinetic teenager and Samantha Sloyan as her overprotective mother. Here\u2019s what to know before watching.The book Stephen King once gave up onStephen King was in his mid-20s, teaching high school English in Maine and living in a trailer, when he started writing \u201cCarrie\u201d in 1972. In \u201cOn Writing: A Memoir of the Craft,\u201d he says that he grew frustrated and threw the opening pages in the trash, but his wife, Tabitha, fished them out and encouraged him to continue. \u201cCarrie\u201d became his debut novel, and when the paperback rights went for $400,000, King quit teaching. His inspiration for the story included two lonely girls he knew, a magazine article on telekinesis and a summer job cleaning a girls\u2019 locker room.AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTCarrie\u2019s story, as told in the bookThe novel is set in Chamberlain, Maine, in the spring of 1979. Carrie White, the outcast of Ewen High School with an intensely religious and controlling mother, gets her first period in the gym showers and, not knowing what\u2019s happening, panics; her classmates pelt her with tampons while jeering. The gym teacher, Miss Desjardin, punishes the class. One girl, Sue Snell, feels guilty and asks her boyfriend, Tommy Ross, to take Carrie to the prom in her place. Another, Chris Hargensen, is furious enough to plot revenge with her boyfriend, Billy Nolan, and two buckets of pig\u2019s blood.ImageCarrie (Sissy Spacek) beginning to get her revenge in the 1976 Brian De Palma film \u201cCarrie.\u201dCredit...Silver Screen Collection\/Getty ImagesThe buckets empty on Carrie just as she and Tommy are crowned queen and king, and one bucket knocks Tommy unconscious. Their classmates burst out laughing. Using her telekinetic powers, Carrie traps them inside and kills nearly all of them, then walks through Chamberlain, opening gas mains and downing power lines, leaving hundreds dead. At home, Margaret stabs her, so Carrie stops her mother\u2019s heart. Even more carnage follows.Telekinesis, according to KingThe novel opens with a 1966 news item about a shower of stones falling on the Whites\u2019 house; inside, Margaret had been punishing Carrie, then a young girl, for talking to a sunbathing neighbor. Carrie\u2019s power goes dormant, then returns with a vengeance during puberty.The book treats telekinesis as a medical condition. Scientists in the book\u2019s documents argue that it is genetic and probably recessive. They warn that Carrie will not be the last of her kind.AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTThe other CarriesArguably the most indelible pop culture images of Carrie \u2014 drenched in blood, eyes wide with dissociative fury \u2014 come from De Palma\u2019s film, a major box-office success starring Sissy Spacek and Piper Laurie, both of whom were nominated for Oscars. In 1988, a Broadway musical starring Betty Buckley as Margaret met with less success, closing after five performances. (A 2012 Off Broadway version did much better.)A 1999 film, \u201cThe Rage: Carrie 2,\u201d directed by Katt Shea, was centered on Carrie\u2019s half sister, Rachel, and it brought back Amy Irving from the De Palma film as Sue. A 2002 made-for-TV movie on NBC, starring Angela Bettis and Patricia Clarkson, was intended to be a pilot for a series that wasn\u2019t made; unlike the novel, it let Carrie live. More recently, Kimberly Peirce\u2019s 2013 feature-length remake, starring Chlo\u00eb Grace Moretz and Julianne Moore, moved the shower scene into the age of cellphone video.ImageJulianne Moore as Margaret, left, and Chlo\u00eb Grace Moretz as Carrie in Kimberly Peirce\u2019s 2013 feature-length remake of \u201cCarrie.\u201dCredit...Michael Gibson\/Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures and Screen GemsFlanagan and KingFlanagan is a longtime King adapter. He made \u201cGerald\u2019s Game\u201d into a 2017 Netflix movie. In 2019 he adapted \u201cDoctor Sleep,\u201d King\u2019s sequel to \u201cThe Shining,\u201d which preserves many of the details of the 1980 Stanley Kubrick film (which King has said he never liked). His movie \u201cThe Life of Chuck,\u201d based on a King short story and starring Tom Hiddleston, won the People\u2019s Choice Award at the Toronto film festival in 2024.For \u201cCarrie,\u201d Flanagan worked with several frequent collaborators, including Sloyan, who played the scripture-quoting Bev Keane in his Netflix series \u201cMidnight Mass.\u201dWhat King thinks of the seriesThe \u201cCarrie\u201d series is not a sequel, so there is no background reading or watching required. (But the novel is a quick read!) Flanagan draws much from the book\u2019s various mock-archival chapters \u2014 fake news clippings, police transcripts and such \u2014 which the movies have mostly ignored.King\u2019s opinion? He described this adaptation as \u201cbrilliant\u201d on Threads, adding, \u201cWhat it has to say about social media is shocking and true.\u201dAdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENT"
}