'Chapelwaite' Images And Teaser Reveal First Look At Stephen King Adaptation Headed To EPIX

Vanity Fair has the first look Chapelwaite images, along with the teaser you can see above. The 10-episode EPIX series stars Adrian Brody and Schitt's Creek's Emily Hampshire, and is based on Stephen King's short story "Jerusalem's Lot." Jerusalem's Lot is, of course, the full name of 'Salem's Lot, the setting of King's 1975 vampire novel. "Jerusalem's Lot" is a prequel, of sorts, drawing influence from the work of H.P. Lovecraft and Edgar Allan Poe. In King's story, Charles Boone and his manservant Calvin McCann move into Chapelwaite, the neglected Boone ancestral home located in the Maine town of Preacher's Corners. At night, Boone and Calvin hear sounds in the walls – sounds they dismiss as rats. But things grow increasingly weird and spooky after Boone and Calvin visit the deserted nearby village called Jerusalem's Lot.

For the EPIX series Chaplewaite, creators Peter Filardi and Jason Filardi have changed things up a bit. Here's the official synopsis:

The series is set in the 1850s. It follows Captain Charles Boone (Brody), who relocates his family of three children to his ancestral home in the small, seemingly sleepy town of Preacher's Corners, Maine after his wife dies at sea. However, Charles will soon have to confront the secrets of his family's sordid history, and fight to end the darkness that has plagued the Boones for generations. Hampshire will play Rebecca Morgan, an ambitious young woman who left Preacher's Corners to attend Mount Holyoke College, and has returned home with an advance to write a story for the new and prestigious Atlantic Magazine. Her writer's block lifts when Boone arrives in town with his children, and despite her mother's protests, Rebecca applies to be governess of the infamous Chapelwaite manor and the Boone family in order to write about them. In doing so, Rebecca will not only craft the next great gothic novel, she'll unravel a mystery that has plagued her own family for years.

"We play with that intentionally to keep our audience guessing," said Peter Filardi. "Is it a haunted-house movie? You learn in the pilot that Charles was also suffering from what appears to be some psychological issues, a madness that all of his other relatives suffer from. What is the danger? Well, it keeps sort of evolving."

The community that Boone moves to "has an age-old grievance against the Boones who first built Chapelwaite and are said to have exploited the town for their lumber operations." In King's story, Boone has no children – but here, he does. The Filardis have used this addition to add to the town's dislike of the Boone family, because Boone's children are noThe town's other problem is they don't like that Boone's children are not white. As the Vanity Fair article explains, "Boone's late wife was Polynesian, from the Marquesas Islands of the South Pacific. She and their children often traveled with him, so their two daughters and young son grew up seeing the world and the many different people who inhabit it, along with experiencing their many languages, faiths, and customs. When their father retreats to New England after the death of their mother, they aren't particularly comfortable among the repressive, homogeneous townfolk either."

"My brother and I grew up in Mystic, Connecticut, which is an old whaling town, and we always wanted to do a New England story and a whaling story. So we made Charles Boone a 19th-century whaling captain. As many of those sailors did way back in the day, they often stopped on islands and fell in love and had families," Jason Filardi said. "We wanted to bring children into it, which would give us not only a richer character for Charles, but also more danger to the show. When horror affects the family, it's a little more horrific."

I really dig the short story that inspired the series – it's creepy and strange, and I'm curious to see how the series adaptation pans out. The images and teaser look appropriately gothic and moody, and the only real flaw I can see here is that the series is on EPIX, a streaming platform I'm not sure anyone actually uses.

Chaplewaite will arrive on EPIX in August. Head over to Vanity Fair for more images and info.