00:00J.J. Abrams is opening up about his partnership with Stephen King and teasing a new horror anthology series with the King of Horror.
00:08While speaking to The Hollywood Reporter to promote Apple TV's Lisey Story, an eight-part miniseries based on King's novel of the same name,
00:16the filmmaker spoke about his collaboration with the iconic horror author, calling it equally thrilling and nerve-wracking.
00:22We worked together a couple of times before, so can you talk a little bit about that partnership and the process of getting this story from page to screen?
00:30Especially knowing how much this story meant to him.
00:32Working with him is always something of an education.
00:37He's a brilliant storyteller and thinks in an obviously incredibly unique and distinct way.
00:46King wrote all eight episodes of Lisey's story, which the author has called a deeply personal story and one of his most cherished works.
00:53He told us that he wanted to adapt it himself. He wanted to write all the episodes.
00:57And that was very exciting because I suddenly realized we were going to have a great roadmap.
01:03The filmmaker also teased another collaboration in the works between the two, an upcoming new horror anthology series.
01:10It's one of my favorite things because it came out of a conversation with him, a sort of what if, I wonder if we could do this particular thing.
01:20And we have and we found, you know, I think the right way to do it and the right partners with whom to do it.
01:29And I could not be more excited. And obviously that's details for another day.
01:34But I will say that, you know, getting to work with him on that, we're doing this, you know, Overlook Hotel series with him as well.
01:41So I feel very lucky to, you know, not just be involved with him on this project, but a couple other ones.
01:47THR also caught up with Lisey's story star Julianne Moore to discuss the project and collaborating with King once again after 2013's Carrie.
01:55What I love about him in particular is that he, everything that he writes is so based in reality and human behavior.
02:04But because it's supernatural and horror, he takes those behaviors, those feelings, those anxieties and literally makes them into a supernatural world.
02:13Elsewhere, Abrams and Moore also opened up about the process of filming the Apple series and navigating production around the novel coronavirus pandemic,
02:21which forced production to shut down for six months.
02:24How much of that impacted the filming process, having to sort of pause and restart?
02:30It impacted it a lot. And it wasn't just a brief shutdown. We shut down when New York shut down.
02:35We had three weeks left in our production. We were actually about to move to our last set at Brooklyn Steiner.
02:41We had no idea how long it was going to be, like everybody. And of course, it ended up being until September.
02:48And we started up again. We were one of the first productions in New York to finish because we just had these like three weeks.
02:54It was a scramble, but it was definitely the most difficult part of the process because, you know, from the screenwriter to the director, to our DP, to the cast and the entire crew,
03:09like we were really blessed with an amazing group of people.
03:12It was a weird feeling because it had been so long ago and so much had transpired in the world that you don't feel like you're the same person.
03:20But I think we were all really grateful that it was something that we cared about and we could all come back together and get it done.
03:26We wanted to tell the story. We really wanted to finish it.
03:29Lisi's story premieres June 4th on Apple TV+.
03:32For more on this interview, head to THR.com.
03:35For The Hollywood Reporter News, I'm Neha Joy.
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