Mike Flanagan wants his adaptation of Stephen King’s Carrie to run three seasons, and he is not being shy about saying so. In a new interview with Collider, the director and showrunner laid out his “dream scenario” for the Prime Video series in blunt terms: a trilogy spread across three eight episode runs, giving Carrie White’s story room to grow well past where King’s 1974 novel ends.
“In my dream scenario, I think it’s three seasons… I think Carrie has a wonderful three step arc. It’s a trilogy, really.”
Mike Flanagan
Prime Video has greenlit only the eight episode first season, premiering October 7 with the full run released at once. Flanagan has spoken for months about wanting the show to do something none of the previous adaptations, including Brian De Palma’s 1976 film, had room for: place Carrie White inside a wider community of women who share her telekinetic ability, a thread present in King’s original novel that most versions leave unexplored. Flanagan has described that ensemble as a kind of sorority with other gifted women entering the story as early as the second episode.
Summer H. Howell stars as Carrie White, with Samantha Sloyan as her mother Margaret White, and a supporting cast that includes Amber Midthunder, Matthew Lillard, and Heather Graham. King holds an executive producer credit alongside Flanagan and has publicly backed expanding his source material rather than simply restaging it. Whether Amazon agrees to Flanagan’s three season math will depend on how the first run performs once it lands next month.
Flanagan has built his career adapting King, from Doctor Sleep to Gerald’s Game, and his run on The Haunting of Hill House and Midnight Mass gives Amazon reason to listen. Carrie premieres on Prime Video October 7.
