The Witch Producer Sets Stephen King’s Rat Loose on the Big Screen

Remember when Ben Stiller was going to make a Stephen King movie? That version of Rat never got rolling. Now a new team has quietly taken the wheel, and it is a pretty legit horror pedigree.

So, what changed?

Deadline says the feature adaptation of King's short story Rat (from his If It Bleeds collection) is back on track with a fresh lineup. Stiller picked up the rights about five years ago and intended to produce, direct, and star, but it never made it into production. Enter a different crew, led by a producer who knows his way around moody New England nightmares.

The new lineup

• Producer: Jay Van Hoy, who produced The Witch and The Lighthouse
• Director: Isaac Ezban (Mal de Ojo, Párvulos)
• Screenplay: Jeff Howard, a frequent Mike Flanagan collaborator on The Haunting of Hill House, Midnight Mass, Oculus, Before I Wake, Ouija: Origin of Evil, and the King adaptation Gerald's Game
• Additional producers: Fernando Ferro and Paul Perez (Perez worked on Doctor Sleep during his time as a Warner Bros. executive)

What Rat is about

Classic King setup: a writer in trouble. Drew Larson is a once-celebrated short story author who retreated into academia because every attempt at a novel wrecks him, mentally or physically. Then he lands on a Western thriller idea that feels like the one. He holes up in his family's cabin to bang it out. Cue storms, spiraling self-doubt, and a nasty illness. That is when a rat shows up with a deal straight out of the Monkey's Paw playbook: the rat will clear Drew's writer's block, but someone Drew loves has to die. It is intimate, nasty, a little weird, and the kind of moral trap King loves to spring.

Why this team makes sense

Ezban is openly a lifelong King guy, and Howard has a long track record with Flanagan on material that walks the line between spooky and human. Van Hoy's resume speaks for itself if you like your horror slow-burn and unnerving. Producers are framing this as a character-first creeper, not just a critter-in-the-wall story.

"I see this as a survival movie about writer's block, and also as the ultimate tale of our craft vs. our people, our creations vs. our loved ones, our art vs. our family."

Everything else is under wraps for now — no casting, no dates — but as long as they keep the story small, mean, and a little funny in that King way, Rat could be a nasty little gem. Also, yes, it is kind of wild that we almost got Ben Stiller starring in this one. Different vibe entirely.