Stephen King isn’t one to mince his words, even when discussing adaptations of his own novels. There are whole lists of the movies made of his works which he has disavowed.
So when he agrees to take an executive producer credit – an option he has on every screen adaptation of his novels – and come on board to consult, you can see it as a vote of confidence.
That’s what he did for the MGM+ (available via Amazon Prime Video) adaptation of his novel The Institute. In the whole eight-part TV show, King only suggested one change and it was for a script stage direction.
As opposed to securing King’s seal of approval, it was casting the show that director Jack Bender and writer Ben Cavell told Metro they were most concerned about, as they weren’t sure they could find someone good enough for the lead role.
The Institute is built around boy genius Luke (Joe Freeman, who has little acting experience as of yet, but the genes of Martin Freeman and Amanda Abbington on his side), who is kidnapped from his childhood home in the dead of night by a shady group of operatives.
He’s taken to the top-secret titular Institute, where a bunch of young’uns with special talents – not just being good with maths, more like telekinesis and telepathy – are imprisoned for sinister geopolitical purposes.
But in the nearby town of DuPray, Tim Jamieson (Ben Barnes) has bagged a job as a neighbourly nighttime security guard – or ‘nightknocker’, as King rendered it – and starts to twig that something is afoot at the heavily-patrolled building on the outskirts.
DuPray is the type of place that’s small enough that everyone knows everyone (and their business) but large enough that dodgy sorts can hide in plain sight. The vibe might remind you of another science fiction horror series: Stranger Things.
This is by no accident. The Duffer brothers have cited King as a major influence for their Netflix show’s style and themes. But The Institute creators told us they never wanted to ape the eeriness of the Upside Down.
Director Jack Bender – who has stints on Lost, The Sopranos and Game of Thrones on his CV – said that he thought Stranger Things was a ‘crayon version’ of what they have made (not disparagingly, he hastened to add).
Bender explained: ‘I don’t mean to say anything derogatory about the show, I thought it was quite good, but it’s a very 80s look at that world and that collection of kids.
‘I wanted this show to be more of, call it an ink drawing as opposed to a coloring book crayon. I just wanted it to have more of an edge.
‘There will certainly be critics who compare it to that, because it’s about young people, it’s a similar place, doesn’t matter that Stephen wrote it first, and they took it – more power, more homage. They love Stephen King.’
The Institute is comparatively ‘darker and grittier’, the show’s writer Ben Cavell said. ‘Not that ours is by any means unrelentingly dark, we have some levity,’ he added.
As opposed to Stranger Things or X-Men – which may come to mind, since The Institute is a bit like a sinister version of Professor Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters – Bender and Cavell’s inspirations were iconic prisoner of war films. ‘I never wanted to make the X-Kids,’ says Cavell.
Films like The Great Escape were top of mind, because the trapped kids and their mission to free themselves was central, rather than have ‘a Liam Neeson or a Jason Statham ride in to save them’.
Bender compared it to his work on Lost, where ‘no one wanted to be on that island, but the point is the audience wanted to hang out.’
He added: ‘I’m not suggesting that people are going to want to hang out at the Institute and be put through psychological and physical torture, but I am saying that these kids invite you in.
‘We were with them, we cared about them and they were the thing. Stephen King said to me early on, the kids are the thing.’
The Institute will premiere in the UK on MGM+ on July 13.
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