Stephen King's The Talisman adaptation to be helmed by The Handmaid's Tale director

The film adaptation of Stephen King and Peter Straub's novel The Talisman will be helmed by The Handmaid's Tale director Mike Barker. Bankrolled by Steven Spielberg's Amblin Partners and The Kennedy/Marshall Company, the film is reportedly penned by Buried-fame Chris Sparling.

The Talisman was published in 1984,  and it marked the first collaboration of the novelists, King and Straub. Known for their horror stories, the writers departed from the genre and wrote Talisman as a fantasy. The story traces the journey of a 12-year-old boy named Jack Sawyer who tries to find a mysterious talisman, but ends up being tracked by the inhabitants of a parallel world called the Territories. 

In 2001, King and Straub released a sequel to The Talisman titled Black House, and the story followed an adult Jack as a retired Los Angeles homicide detective on a mission to solve a series of murders.