J.J. Abrams and Stephen King team with thirtysomething creators Ed Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz for King adaptation Billy Summers

Deadline

The thirtysomething and Once and Again creators are set to adapt King's 2021 crime novel Billy Summers as part of a limited series package that is being shopped to high-end cable networks and streamers. Abrams and King previously collaborated on Lisey’s Story, Castle Rock and 11.22.63. Billy Summers revolves around the title character, "a hitman who is looking to retire and takes one last highly lucrative job to feather his nest," per Deadline. "The job requires him to embed himself in a quiet town, where he pretends to be an aspiring writer (he actually pours himself into the prose). He sets up in an office with a direct view of where hitman Joel Allen will be delivered to face trial for shooting two men during a poker game. Allen also has committed enough murders for some high-level mobsters to be scared the gunman will incriminate his former employers to lessen his sentence. Summers, a meticulous craftsman, becomes more and more cynical about the mobsters who’ve hired him, and his skepticism is well warranted as things go awry following the job’s completion."