Entertainment

‘Dome’ improvement

Mike Vogel plays former Army captain Dale “Barbie” Barbara. (CBS)

No other horror writer has matched the crossover success of Stephen King, who, starting with his first novel, “Carrie,” in 1974, has cranked out dozens of books, selling an estimated 350 million copies.

His first novel adapted for television was “Salem’s Lot,” a miniseries that aired on CBS in 1979. On Monday night, his bestselling 2009 novel “Under the Dome” will become his 19th TV project, with a 13-episode run on the same network.

“Dome” tells the story of Chester’s Mill, a sleepy town suddenly cut off from the world by a translucent dome that violently descends from the clear blue sky.

Nine minutes into the first episode, the dome slams into the ground, slicing through anything in its path — foliage, buildings, farm equipment, even flesh. A grazing cow is cleaved in half lengthwise, leaving its bloody carcass on both sides of the structure.

But compared to previous blood-drenched King adaptations like “The Shining” and “Carrie,” viewers shouldn’t be shocked by its unflinching scenes, says executive producer Brian K. Vaughan.

“I don’t think we’re as gory as either of those, but we definitely don’t shy away from moments of graphic horror,” he says. “Still, some of the most terrifying moments are purely psychological.”

That means Chester’s Mill’s isolated residents and visitors — already facing power outages and dwindling supplies — will contend with wide-spread paranoia.

King’s 1,088-page novel has a hefty 63 characters (and three dogs) that have been pared down for the series, Vaughan says. At the forefront is an increasingly grandstanding town councilman, James “Big Jim” Rennie (played by Dean Norris of AMC’s “Breaking Bad”). Rennie envisions saving the day and appearing on the cover of “Time” magazine as he pushes a megalomaniacal agenda. He builds up an army of volunteer cops — including his disturbed, violent son, Junior (Alexander Koch) — to enforce a twisted marshal law that could include public executions for those who go against him.

His antagonists include a former military officer, Dale “Barbie” Barbara (Mike Vogel of “Bates Motel” and “Pan Am”), who searches for the dome’s origins with a nosy reporter, Julia Shumway (Rachelle Lefevre of CBS’s “A Gifted Man”).

For Vaughan, the book’s premise has universal appeal. “You start imagining, ‘What if I were trapped in my hometown? What would I do if I never got to leave?’ ” says Vaughan. “A lot of people feel trapped where they are. They can identify with it — people

are underwater with their houses right now; they can’t move because they’re trapped in their job.”

“Dome” executive producer Jack Bender agrees. “King brilliantly creates characters we see ourselves in, and he puts them in these extraordinary situations we’re all afraid of,” he says. “That’s a real gripping formula for television and cinema.”

The book’s plot unwinds over about a week, but producers are aiming for multiple seasons. That sets ‘Dome’ apart from most of King’s prior TV adaptations.

“Many of Stephen King’s television adaptations, like ‘It’ or ‘The Stand,’ have been finite miniseries that attempted to faithfully translate every part of the novels from which they were adapted,” Vaughan says. “Our adaptation is intended to be an ongoing series, one that uses the source material as a launching pad to explore brand-new territory. There will also be plenty of surprises in store for readers who loved King’s novel as much as I do.”

Director and producer Mick Garris, who worked with King on several prior television adaptations, including 2011’s “Bag of Bones,” understands the author’s appeal first-hand. He recalls an incident when King visited the Las Vegas set of the 1994 miniseries “The Stand,” which employed hundreds of extras.

“King walked onto the location. One extra sees him, then two, then four — soon 500 of them are swarming around. He had to high-tail it back to the plane and go home because it was bordering on dangerous,” he says.

Garris also says King merges his horror with a populist appeal.

“He can express a range of emotions that’s rarely expressed in fear and terror. He not only finds the humanity in it — he is the humanity in it,” Garris says. “In a way, he’s Charles Dickens dipped in blood.”

Of course, King does have his naysayers. Some cried foul when his book was released in 2009 because, two years prior, a big-screen film based on the Fox animated comedy “The Simpsons” featured a story line in which the town of Springfield was encased under a dome after Homer accidentally polluted the town’s water supply.

King has said he started but never finished two “Dome”manuscripts begun in the 1970s and ’80s. The second version, “The Cannibals,” was posted to his official Web site

stephenking.com, saying it was the “genesis” for “Under the Dome.”

“Stories about domes coming down over cities are about as old as Atlantis and probably beyond, but I think what Mr. King does is pretty original,” Vaughan says. And just as a 2010 “Simpsons” episode had a cheeky reference to King’s novel, Vaughan says “Dome” will offer an homage to “The Simpsons Movie” in an early episode to note “what everyone on Twitter is saying to us.”

Regardless of which dome came first, the producers made a concerted effort to create as realistic and original a CGI “dome” as possible, right down to calculating its circumference and other details. King, widely known for his laid-back, fun-loving nature, kept the tone less serious.

“We laid out how to determine the exact height. After awhile, Steve interrupted us and said, ‘You guys know you can just make s–t up, right?,’” Vaughan says, laughing. “But as far as invisible domes go, ours has got to be one of the more realistic ones out there.”