Salem’s Lot director reveals it was originally much longer

There was a lot of hype surrounding Salem’s Lot heading into its long-awaited streaming premiere in early October. The Gary Dauberman-directed adaptation of Stephen King‘s beloved 1975 novel originally finished filming in the summer of 2022, but then it was seemingly put on the shelf for an indefinite amount of time by Warner Bros. Pictures. King himself, however, helped bring attention back to the project in February when he tweeted his positive thoughts about it and expressed his confusion over its behind-the-scenes delays. Shortly afterward, WB announced it would be releasing Salem’s Lot as a Max exclusive.

King’s support of the film did a lot to bolster the early word-of-mouth surrounding it, but that didn’t stop Salem’s Lot from being welcomed with mostly mixed reviews when it premiered on October 3. The film was notably criticized for its rushed retelling of King’s iconic vampire story and its inability to fully flesh out its characters. Some, consequently, speculated that the movie’s biggest problems may have been due to studio interference and corporate-mandated cuts.

Whether that’s true or not is unclear. In an interview with Den of Geek, though, Dauberman did confirm that his original cut of Salem’s Lot was much, much longer than the 113-minute version that was released. “My first cut was about three hours,” the filmmaker revealed. “There’s a lot left out. My first draft of the script is 180-odd pages or something.”

While speaking with Den of Geek, Dauberman offered some insight into what specifically from his original, 3-hour version of Salem’s Lot ended up being left on the cutting room floor. He singled out one scene, in particular, from King’s original novel in which Ben Mears (played as an adult in Dauberman’s film by Lewis Pullman) has a ghostly encounter in a haunted house. “In the book, Ben sneaks into the Marsten House and he sees the ghost of Hubert Marsten,” Dauberman noted. “I shot that and it used to open the movie, but it seemed to muddy the waters for audiences … That was the hardest thing to cut because I love the sequence.”

Knowing that a longer and likely more fleshed-out version of Salem’s Lot did exist at some point may only make watching the disappointingly slight cut that was actually released all the more frustrating for fans of its 1975 source material. For his part, though, Dauberman seems to have — for the time being, at least — come to terms with the cuts he had to make in order to get Salem’s Lot in front of the public.

Salem’s Lot is streaming now exclusively on Max.