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The Weekly Static s01e20.3 – 2018 "Cusack" Series: Hulu's Castle Rock

Welcome to the third and final act in The Weekly Static's three-part mid-season finale! As we wrap up this little shindig, make sure to check out Friday's "post-mortem" on our biggest overall disappointment of 2017: Spike's The Mist; and on Saturday, we unveiled 2017's "little engine that could" MVP: TruTV. This time, we hit the gas and don't look back as we charge into 2018 with a series that's giving us enough of the feels that it's earned the distinction of being our 2018 "Cusack" Series*: Hulu's Castle Rock:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3U7Z94NHgg

The fictional town of Castle Rock has figured prominently in a number of Stephen King's works. Cujo, The Dark Half, It, Needful Things, the novella "The Body" (the basis for the film Stand by Me) and short story "Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption" (the basis for the film The Shawshank Redemption) are just some of the writings that are either set in or contain references to the town and surrounding area. Hulu's psychological suspense/thriller series Castle Rock looks to unite those common elements into King's own "shared universe." Here's why we think that's a righteously great idea, and why early signs point to Castle Rock being a breakout series for 2018:

In October, Bleeding Cool was able to grab some interview time during New York Comic Con 2017 with some of the cast and creative behind the eagerly anticipated series. Bill Skarsgard (It) portrays a still-unnamed young man with a very unique and specific legal issue that brings him into direct contact with Andre Holland's Henry, who he first meets as a prisoner at Shawshank (yup, that one). Skargard covered a number of topics during our time, including if there's a difference between working in horror and other genres; whether or not costumes/effects in a movie like It make his performance, or vice-versa; and why he was looking forward to meeting King:

Holland's Henry is a death-row attorney who finds his way back to Castle Rock after years away when he's asked to look into a mysterious crime at Shawshank. Coming off of the success of the Academy Award winning film Moonlight and at the time finishing work on Ava DuVernay's A Wrinkle In Time, Holland covered a variety of topics, including: which King novels he was assigned as "homework;" what he hopes viewers take away from Henry; and why Castle Rock is the best pilot script he's ever read:

Melanie Lynskey (Heavenly Creatures) plays Molly Strand, a woman with a rare health issue who's barely making ends meet as a real estate agent in a town where every home holds a deep, dark secret. Lynskey's career has spanned both movies and television…including a previous visit to King's world with the three-part ABC mini-series Rose Red. An admitted avid King reader, Lynskey's cautious answers gave us the strong feeling that Molly might have a whole lot more going on than anyone realizes:

Sam Shaw (Masters of Sex) and Dustin Thomason (Lie to Me) are self-confessed King "geeks" who developed the project and are executive producing alongside Abrams, Ben Stephenson, and Liz Glotzer. During the interview, Shaw and Thomason discussed how Castle Rock gave them the opportunity to turn their hours of Castle Rock connect-the-dots in their personal time into a television series; the importance of The Shawshank Redemption on the show's first season; and how a second season of Castle Rock would differ from the first:

Joining them is an impressive line-up of genre veterans, beginning with Scott Glenn as King's beloved retired sheriff Alan Pangborn, who may be needed yet again to maintain the peace in Castle Rock. Sissy Spacek plays Ruth Deaver, Henry's adoptive mother and retired professor whose aging insight into the darker places of Castle Rock's past might hold the key to uncovering the truth. Jane Levy is on-board as Jackie, the death-obsessed self-appointed historian of Castle Rock and (possible) ally for Henry; and Terry O'Quinn has been tapped to play Dale Lacy, described as a "pillar of the community" in Castle Rock.

*A "Cusack" series is a series that we believe has distinguished itself or will distinguish itself as something special and worth obsessing over. The honor is named after the great John Cusack, the acting "golden god" behind such cinematic masterpieces as One Crazy Summer, Better Off Dead, Grosse Pointe Blank and High Fidelity.

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