Mike Flanagan is breaking a major personal rule while working on the Carrie adaptaion

When Mike Flanagan approached Stephen King for another Carrie adaptation, even the author didn't understand why the director wanted to do something that had been done by so many before him. King all but forbade Flanagan from touching her, saying, "Leave her alone. She's been through enough."

And she sure has: With more than five on-screen adaptations and a Broadway musical, King's bullied and bloody teenager has been adapted into several different media forms. Even Flanagan himself admitted to breaking a somewhat personal rule of not taking on sequels or remakes when deciding to adapt Carrie.

But he had a vision, and the vision forced him to break his own personal rule and take on another Stephen King adaptation (his fourth). The official logline for his adaptation reads:

"A bold and timely reimagining of the story of misfit high-schooler Carrie White (Howell), who has spent her life in seclusion with her domineering mother. After her father’s sudden and untimely death, Carrie finds herself contending with the alien landscape of public High School, a bullying scandal that shatters her community, and the emergence of mysterious telekinetic powers."

Mike Flanagan had a special reason to break his personal rule with the Carrie adaptation

Mike Flanagan has been established as the go-to Stephen King adapter, for lack of a better word, owing to the number of adaptations he's already done and the ones that are still in the works. Gerald's Game and Doctor Sleep are among the directed projects, and The Dark Tower series and The Life of Chuck film are in production.

So, another Stephen King adaptation was not out of the ordinary for Flanagan. However, taking on a story that had been told over and over again in different media of storytelling was out of the ordinary. Flanagan himself explains in a recent conversation with Empire Magazine that he had a hard-and-fast personal rule not to take on remakes or sequels, but taking on Carrie was quite the rule-breaking.

However, he went on to reason that he had found a much different angle on the age-old Stephen King story that he wanted to explore in his version of the adaptation. Even King, once hearing more about this angle of the Carrie story, Flanagan reveals in a conversation with Variety, found himself excited as a viewer to find out where the story goes.

Flanagan reveals that for his adaptation, the age-old story of Carrie White, the teenager who is bullied and ends up destroying half her town after discovering she has supernatural powers, is not the central tenet. Even though youth and bullying are the major themes for the story, he adds that he is not retelling King's story, and he's not making a show focused on White's supernatural abilities.

"The thing I would say is the original story is half a century old and it’s wonderful. Its themes were about youth and bullying and the consequences of that. I believe that in today’s modern world, the power of what it means to be a bully, the breadth of that and the impact of bullying, have changed a lot. The central tenets are still the same, but it’s about much more than Carrie White."

Focusing on what his adaptation is about, Flanagan adds that he wanted to focus on the destruction that the community endures as a result of bullying in the modern world, where anonymity adds another layer of protection for the bully. So he intended to explore the added layer of horror where the bullies are protected by their anonymity:

"So we’re focused way more on the destruction of a community through these very modern tools. What happens in a world where the internet has created an environment of perceived anonymity? Carrie White in the locker room in every iteration is a horrifying scene. Carrie White in the locker room when people have phones in their hands is a whole different thing."

Flanagan has a new angle on King's material, and per him, this adaptation, even though it breaks his rule of remakes, is something that he needed to do.

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