Stephen King and John Mellencamp Write a Musical

Posted on February 28, 2008

Stephen King has written a musical with John Mellencamp that they'll be trying out in Atlanta, with an eye towards a Broadway run.

"Ghost Brothers of Darkland County," a new Southern Gothic musical by Stephen King, the horror writer, and John Mellencamp, the musician, is to open in April 2009 at the Alliance Theater in Atlanta. In a recent interview in Rolling Stone Mr. Mellencamp said that if the musical, about the reverberations of a tragedy in small-town Mississippi, did well in Atlanta, it would head to Broadway.

The musical is desribed as "a sultry Southern gothic mystery with a blues-tinged, guitar-driven score." The story is set in the tiny town of Lake Belle Reve, Mississipi in 1957. Two brothers and a young girl die tragically and a legend grows out of the incident. The director is Peter Askin, of Hedwig and the Angry Inch fame.

The whole idea was John Mellencamp's. It's based on a story he heard when he was a kid in his hometown of Seymour, Indiana. The duo spent all last summer writing the musical. This is the oddest project announcement we've heard of in a while, but hey, why not?