The celebrated novel Carrie by horror master Stephen King is getting a new adaptation, developed by Mike Flanagan, arriving on Amazon Prime Video on October 7, 2026. The book, published in 1974, was King’s first major success and launched a long career marked by numerous film adaptations of his novels. Carrie itself made it to the big screen as early as 1976, courtesy of Brian De Palma — a leading figure of New Hollywood, also known for Scarface, The Untouchables, and Mission: Impossible — earning an Oscar nomination at the time. This year marks the 50th anniversary of that film, and this fall the new TV series will debut, reimagining the story in a contemporary light by showing how bullying has evolved in the age of social media, where cruelty spreads without filters or limits.
The novel follows a sixteen-year-old high school senior. Withdrawn and quiet, Carrie carries the weight of a childhood shaped by her mother’s religious fanaticism — a puritanical woman for whom everything is sin. At home, she is frequently punished and locked away in a closet, forced to atone for sins she never committed; at school, she is an easy target for her classmates’ mockery. But there’s a secret no one knows, a power hidden beneath her shyness: Carrie has telekinetic abilities, and it’s only a matter of time before she learns to control them.
The project is led by Mike Flanagan, marking his first move from novel to television for a Stephen King work, after previously collaborating with the author in 2019 on the film Doctor Sleep, the sequel to The Shining. King himself serves as an executive producer on this Amazon MGM Studios production, described as a modern retelling of a classic coming-of-age novel.
The series consists of eight episodes, four of which are directed by Flanagan himself, faithfully following the novel’s plot through the small everyday choices made by its characters, which build up to a single, fateful night. Set in the public high school Carrie attends following her father’s death, the story follows her struggle against a merciless school environment: an act of bullying will act as the catalyst for the awakening of her powers, right as she navigates the hardest years of her adolescence. A story suspended between kindness and cruelty, leaving one central question: will we witness the rise of a heroine, a monster, or something far harder to define?
Photo credit: Alex Gotfryd via Wikimedia Commons
