The Institute finally brings a Stephen King adaptation to fans. We are already halfway through 2025 and only have that and It: Welcome to Derry to look forward to after The Monkey happened earlier and ‘Salem’s Lot and The Life of Chuck happened before that, and The Long Walk and The Running Man are upcoming…
The Institute
The Institute is a TV series that will premiere July 13 on MGM+. It is directed by Jack Bender, who worked on Lost, The Sopranos and Game of Thrones. It stars Ben Barnes (The Chronicles of Narnia) and Mary-Louise Parker (Fried Green Tomatoes). The premise is thus:
Teen genius Luke Ellis (Joe Freeman) wakes up in a strange place full of children who got there the same way he did, and who all, like him, possess unusual abilities. That is The Institute, ran by the mysterious Ms Sigsby (Mary-Louise Parker). In a nearby town, haunted former police officer Tim Jamieson (Ben Barnes) has come looking to start a new life, but the peace and quiet won’t last, as his story and Luke’s are destined to collide.
Spooky. It’s like they cribbed the story from my formative years.
I never read The Institute. I haven’t read a Stephen King book since The Outsider, which was okay until that insufferable Holly Gibney character showed up to provide all of the answers and solutions. It seemed like King reached a point in that book where he thought, “Hmmm…actually writing a mystery would be hard, so I’ll bring in this character to resolve everything, and I can get back to watching the Red Sox.”
Here is my impression of Holly Gibney.:
“Gosh. Everything normal is so hard. I feel so weird and autistic that I can hardly bring myself to go to the grocery store. Yet, I’m going to do it for my friends, who are so nice to me. It is hard being a brilliant woman who is plain but strong, oh so strong…”
Okay, maybe that was unduly harsh, and maybe Holly Gibney would play better if I owned five cats and took Estroven, but I don’t. I got to be me.
And I say that as someone who has The Running Man as their favorite book.
But back to The Institute. It appears it is King revisiting things he has mined before in stories like Firestarter. Man, what a trip that movie was (the original, not the remake). They had one of the greatest scenery chewers of all time, Freddie Jones, Martin Sheen, Art Carney, Louise Fletcher and George C. Scott and Heather Locklear. That’s an incredible cast for such a middling film, but you got to love when a bunch of greats come together and do something like The Swarm.
