Castle Rock's creators on devising a horror series in "the era of terror"

If you're wondering why your spookiest friend just cancelled next Wednesday's cocktail night, it's because that's when the JJ Abrams and Stephen King collaboration Castle Rock airs for the first time. It's got creepy kids, Shawshank State Penitentiary, and promises plenty of horror. Showrunner Dustin Thomason explained how the series builds a world around King's prolific back catalogue. 

“What was interesting about returning to this material now is we live in this moment defined by fear,” Thomason tells our sister publication SFX magazine. “We think of this as the era of terror. There are a lot of questions about how you continue to live in a world that feels increasingly uncertain and fragile."

The series is set in the town of Castle Rock, and needless to say, it's a town that has seen its fair share of the strange. 

"Part of what we felt was there wouldn’t be one monolithic point of view within Castle Rock about the nature of all the misfortunes that have been visited on the town," continues Thomason. 

"There are people who live in this town, who hold onto a supernatural vision of what has befallen them. Then there are others who think they are just in a bad luck town, in a bad luck country. The reality is they go on with their lives, in the way that all of us do, even in the face of disaster.”

Castle Rock starts on Hulu on July 25. 

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