The Trailer for Stephen King's 'The Mist' Makes a Giant Cloud Look Scarier Than It Has Any Right to Be

"Do not fear..."

The local priest in the debut trailer for the TV adaptation of Stephen King's The Mist may say "do not fear," but that eerie blanket of mist looks pretty terrifying.

Based on King's 1980 novella of the same title, the upcoming Spike series sees a small town in Maine being submerged in a mysterious cloak of fog that seems to be hiding supernatural predators. The Walking Dead creator Frank Darabont originally adapted the book into a 2007 film starring Toby Jones and Marcia Gay Harden, which also featured that harrowing denouement.

Show-runner Christian Torpe has revealed he wanted to make the 10-part series completely different from the movie, starting with its location.

"I wanted to be respectful to the source material, but my feeling was there was already a great adaptation out there by Frank Darabont," the Danish writer and director told Entertainment Weekly. "The novella is 200 pages and one location, and we needed to change that to make an ongoing series. But we wanted to remain faithful to the heart of the story."

While the horror film was located solely in a local grocery store, the series will spread out across various different places in lockdown, including a church and a shopping mall.

"But we are not just in the mall," Torpe continued. "We establish different little pressure cookers under the influence of whoever the leader would be in those locations. Each of them come up with different theories or beliefs about what's going on. Eventually, the story lines will dovetail and turn into conflicts."

The main characters include Vikings star Alyssa Sutherland as schoolteacher Eve Copeland and her nice-guy liberal husband Kevin, played by Morgan Spector. Their seemingly disturbed neighbor Nathalie Raven, played by Six Feet Under's Frances Conroy, is a self-proclaimed prophet who claims to have a spiritual connection to the couple.

Trope added: "Eve was sort of a wild child, and the town still subliminally holds her sexuality against her. There's a lot of misogyny under the surface. [And] Kevin believes in all the right values of kindness and forgiveness, but they're easy values for him. He's never been tested. I wanted to test: Does he have the courage of his convictions, or will he break under enough pressure?"

The Mist premieres on Spike on June 22.

Follow Marie Claire on Facebook for the latest celeb news, beauty tips, fascinating reads, livestream video, and more.

Naomi Gordon

Naomi Gordon is news writer mainly covering entertainment news with a focus on celebrity interviews and television.