Prime Video Orders Six-Part Stephen King Series 'Crouch End' — the First King Adaptation Made in the U.K.

Prime Video has greenlit a six-part limited series adapting Stephen King's short story "Crouch End," marking the first time a King work has been produced for screen in the U.K. (Variety).

The order is a straight-to-series commission, meaning no pilot episode is shot first — all six episodes go straight into production. Paul Tomalin is writing the adaptation, with Tom Shankland attached to direct. Tomalin's screenwriting credits include the Netflix crime drama Bodies; Shankland has directed episodes of The Serpent and House of Cards. (Variety)

Mammoth Screen and Fifth Season are producing. The executive producer lineup consists of Tomalin, Shankland, Damien Timmer, Rebecca Keane and Ben Irving. Nicole Clemens, VP of International Originals at Prime Video and Amazon MGM Studios, oversees the project from the platform's side. (Variety)

King first published "Crouch End" in 1980 in the anthology New Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos. The story later appeared in his 1993 collection Nightmares & Dreamscapes. It follows two American lawyers who visit a London neighbourhood and encounter something that does not obey the usual rules of reality. (Variety)

The story is widely read as a homage to H.P. Lovecraft — the early-20th-century horror writer whose "Cthulhu Mythos" invented a shared universe of ancient, indifferent cosmic beings. King's tale folds direct references to Lovecraft into its London setting, transplanting the dread of rural New England into the streets of a quiet district between Highgate and Hampstead. (Variety)

For readers unfamiliar with the story, that cross-pollination is part of what makes it distinctive: Lovecraft's gods and dimensions are usually summoned in remote farmhouses or crumbling seaside towns, not a postcode you can reach on the London Underground.

No premiere date or casting announcements have been confirmed.