‘Salem’s Lot’ stars on book changes and pressures of adapting Stephen King (exclusive)

Makenzie Leigh realized very quickly that, when you’re talking about a vampire movie, just about everything is a pun, particularly when discussing Salem’s Lot, the latest adaptation of Stephen King‘s classic horror novel from 1975.

“The world turns and you hope eventually it sees” — ahem — “the light of day,” the actress, 34, tells Entertainment Weekly, reflecting on the years it took to get the film a release date. “I’m so glad that it’s coming out,” Lewis Pullman, 31, who plays lead Ben Mears, remarks in a separate interview. “The whole cast is so killer.” (Oop! There’s another one.)

It’s true, it has been a minute between the end of principal photography in late 2021 on what was supposed to be a theatrical release, and today, when Warner Bros. Discovery now plans to drop Salem’s Lot on streaming platform Max this October — just in time for spooky season. Even King himself found himself wondering aloud on Twitter why it was taking so long. “That was a real tragedy of a period of time where we thought it was maybe just not going to be coming out,” Pullman comments.

It takes both stars some time to bring themselves back to the headspace of their former selves at the time of making the movie. “I mean, I’m in my third trimester of pregnancy,” Leigh says of how long it’s been. “Watching it was mostly just looking at my tiny, tiny waist and wondering how I’d ever looked like that in my entire life.”

There have been two adaptations of Salem’s Lot already: 1979’s two-part CBS miniseries, followed by a 1987 movie sequel, as well as the 2004 TNT iteration. Plus, Epix did an Adrien Brody-led show called Chapelwaite, based on King’s prequel short story “Jerusalem’s Lot.” Director Gary Dauberman, a writer on the It and It Chapter Two movies, now adapts the material for the first time as a feature film.

The premise remains the same: Ben Mears, a best-selling author, returns to his childhood home of Jerusalem’s Lot, Maine, seeking a change of scenery and a dose of creative inspiration. Despite falling for Susan Norton, who has bigger dreams beyond her small town, he couldn’t have come at a worse time.

Ben’s arrival coincides with a man named Richard Straker (Pilou Asbæk) taking up residence in a long-abandoned mansion that overlooks Jerusalem’s Lot — where his master, an ancient vampire, dwells. The tragedies begin with the disappearance of the young Ralph Glick (Cade Woodward), followed swiftly by his brother, Danny (Nicholas Crovetti), the earliest victims of this bloodsucker, who threatens to take over the entire community.

In EW’s exclusive clip (shown above) from Salem’s Lot, Ben and Susan join Alfre Woodard as Dr. Cody, who first fears the spread of a blood illness; Jordan Preston Carter as school kid horror expert Mark Petrie; and John Benjamin Hickey as local priest Father Callahan as they investigate the Straker’s mansion to find evidence of a dead body. Bill Camp also stars as Van Helsing-esque school teacher Matthew Burke.

“Salem’s Lot is such a special book because there’s a lot of macro sociopolitical themes in there. It’s not just a horror book,” Pullman says. “How Gary approached it was almost like, this is not a horror movie. This is a movie about a small town in America where something horrific happens. He was trying to also rekindle the fire of mystique about vampires. They’ve shifted in many different ways over the last couple of decades in terms of pop culture. I think Gary really wanted to return back to this very mysterious, almost mythological lens on them.”

Pullman, the son of actor Bill Pullman, went on to appear in Top Gun: Maverick, Apple TV+ series Lessons in Chemistry, and Amazon’s Outer Range. He also landed a splashy Marvel role in the upcoming Thunderbolts*, but at the time, Salem’s Lot marked his first lead movie part and his first time involved in an adaptation of such a beloved literary work.

“I felt a lot of pressure,” he admits. “It’s so funny to be in a point in the industry where the most treasured thing is adapting beloved stories. It’s where we seem to be really focused as an industry right now, which is an interesting place to be because you’re trying to bring more life to something that already has such a flourishing, colorful life as a book or, if it’s a remake, a move from the past. It’s almost like reliving memories, but trying to inject them with something that’s more topical and more present.”

He also felt “quite a bit of weight” playing a King protagonist, especially a character who is a writer, which is a recurring figure in a lot of his works. “In a lot of his books, it feels as though it’s almost a conduit for himself,” Pullman remarks. “At least, I felt like I was almost playing Stephen King, and I quickly had to try to shed myself of that idea because, obviously, I think that the more true you play something to something [that is] true to yourself, the more compelling it is.”

Leigh, though an avid reader of fantasy, including King’s Dark Tower series, hadn’t read Salem’s Lot or watched the previous adaptations, mainly because she knew Dauberman wanted to achieve something different. “Gary told me how much he had changed,” she says. “I think specifically with the character of Susan, he had taken liberties that felt like I should take the same liberties, as well, and run with my instincts about how to play her.” To get into specifics would be to spoil the fun of how this movie unfolds. “In this film in particular,” she continues, “it felt like a question of, how did my character fit in with the world that he was creating? How could I be a part of that tone?”

Dauberman’s story is set in the 1970s, the same time period as King’s original novel. And the film itself feels like a movie made in a different, more retro era, from the practical sets to specific shots that emulate that vintage, pulp imagery that once donned the paperback book covers of Salem’s Lot. Pullman describes it as a “guttural approach.”

“It was all practical to my memory,” Leigh recalls of the effects. “I think we shot a couple things on green screen, and those are actually things that didn’t end up getting used.”

Pullman’s Ben also feels like that classic King character of the ’70s and ’80s, an every man of classical Americana. “I think Gary said to me multiple times, ‘I just wanted somebody who looks like they know how to change a tire,'” the actor says. “When we first met, he was like, ‘Do you know how to change your tire?’ I was like, ‘Yeah. Do you need your tire changed? Do you not have AAA, buddy?’ That was a really fun thing to be able to play. How do you make this as realistic as possible? Somebody who doesn’t really know how to even throw a punch, who then all of a sudden is trying to get to save the town from an invasion of vampires.”

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This Salem’s Lot also feels, in some ways, like an action movie to both stars. The final sequence, in particular, is a climactic event that plays out at a drive-in movie theater. It’s not how King’s novel ends, but the scene allowed Pullman and Leigh learn stunts. “My body was broken after,” Pullman remarks.

“I really, really enjoyed throwing my body around and learning from our stunt doubles how the whole process works,” Leigh says. “I had no trial by fire in terms of…” She laughs because, again, she’s making puns.