Before writing his series in collaboration with Netflix, Mike Flanagan had imagined a film adapted from the novel The Midnight Club. But its author decided otherwise…
In 1994, American author Christopher Pike published his novel The Midnight Club, inspired as we tell you here by his encounter with a terminally ill fan. A work that will have thrilled millions of readers, including a certain Mike Flanagan. The young boy was only ten years old when he discovered the works of Pike, a sort of Goosebumps for young adults.
A few years later, when he was starting his university course and already harboring the idea of one day being a director, Flanagan set out to write a script on one of his favorite books. From The Midnight Club, he decides to make it not a series, but a low-budget independent film.
He thinks of everything while asking his relatives to invest in his project, but he lacks an important detail: the agreement of Christopher Pike and his publishing house. The young prodigy then takes his courage in both hands and decides to send a letter to his agent. What he responded with a rejection letter, asking him to destroy the script immediately. Which he will, of course.
It must be said that Christopher Pike – who is also an assumed name – likes to play the card of mystery, especially since his retirement, and practically does not give interviews. If he refuses that Hollywood adapts his writings, it is because he authorized one (a television film produced by NBC), which he considered mediocre.
But a message sent by Flanagan on Facebook seems to have changed his mind, as he relates in this interview. It must be said that the author was at the same time in full viewing of The Haunting of Hill House, nugget of horror and poetry. If Pike was at first skeptical of Flanagan’s proposal, the latter convinced him, after long discussions on the telephone. The series will see the light of day a few years later, with the blessing of its author.