Posted in: HBO, Preview, Trailer, TV | Tagged: bleeding cool, books, cable, HBO, Holly Gibney, if it bleeds, novels, stephen king, streaming, television, The Outsider, tv

The Outsider Author Stephen King Reads from New Holly Gibney Tale

As excited as we still are for the success of Watchmen, HBO's adaptation of Stephen King's 2018 bestseller The Outsider proved to be the vicious, violent underdog that we (and a lot of viewers) didn't see coming at first. But as the season stalked along, the series found itself not only gaining more critical praise but also earning enough eyeballs to put it above some of the cable giant's other successes. As much as the series ended with enough resolution for it to a complete tale, powerful performances from Cynthia Erivo (Holly Gibney) and Ben Mendelsohn (Ralph Anderson) have viewers wanting and hoping for a second-season return. This Tuesday, April 21, viewers will get their wish but there's a catch: it comes in book form. That's when King's new story collection If It Bleeds from Simon & Schuster Books hits the market, consisting of three novellas and a novel.

The three novellas offer unique, modern takes on some recurring King themes: "Mr. Harrigan's Phone" offers a tech-based cautionary tale, while "Rat" once again focuses on the hardship of writing and what authors are willing to do for their craft; and "The Life of Chuck" tells an epic tale (backward). But for fans of The Outsider and Gibney, it's the novel named after the collection that they'll want to pay special attention to: a solo adventure that finds Gibney drawn into a world of danger once more after her obsession over a vanishing mole on a news reporter's face forces her to investigate. The connection to King's previous novel comes when Anderson opens an envelope sent to him from Gibney that contains evidence of the case as well as an audio report from Gibney that did not sound promising. If that's still not enough to sell you, then let King convince you as he reads the first chapter from If It Bleeds:

Speaking of The Outsider, so what's the deal with those rumors of there being more to come in the "Gibney-verse"? When asked last month, Mendelsohn didn't have anything official to say, but he was hearing some things, too: "This is the God's honest truth: I've been told some way, somewhere, someone is writing, and somewhere that person who's writing is saying, 'Go away until I'm finished.' So no one knows. No one knows whether there'll be another, who'll be in it, what it will be about, any of those questions. I'll put a bet that they make another, but as to who is in or out or what that's about or anything else, I couldn't tell you. That's the God's honest truth."

HBO's The Outsider follows police detective Ralph Anderson (Mendelsohn), as he sets out to investigate the mutilated body of 11-year-old Frankie Peterson found in the Georgia woods. The mysterious circumstances surrounding this horrifying crime leads Ralph, still grieving the recent death of his own son, to bring in unorthodox private investigator Holly Gibney (Erivo), whose uncanny abilities he hopes will help explain the unexplainable. Meanwhile, an insidious supernatural force edges its way into the case…

HBO's The Outsider starred Mendelsohn, Erivo, Jason Bateman, Bill Camp, Mare Winningham, Paddy Considine, Julianne Nicholson, Yul Vázquez, Jeremy Bobb, Marc Menchaca, Hettienne Park, Michael Esper, Derek Cecil, and Max Beesley. Price executive produces with Bernstein, Bateman, and Michael Costigan via Aggregate Films, Marty Bowen for Temple Hill Entertainment, and Bender. MRC serves as the studio on the project, produced by Bateman's Aggregate Films and Temple Hill Entertainment.

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