Mike Flanagan’s 2026 adaptation of Stephen King’s debut novel "Carrie" brings the story to Prime Video as an eight-episode series, streaming officially from October 7, 2026. While the new version keeps the central story of a bullied teenage girl with terrifying telekinetic powers, it takes a very different approach from Brian De Palma’s famous 1976 film.
The biggest change is the format. De Palma told Carrie’s story as a tightly focused, roughly 98-minute horror movie. Flanagan uses eight episodes to slow the story down, explore its characters in greater detail and expand the world of King’s original novel.
The new series — featuring Summer H. Howell as the lead title character, Carrie White, Samantha Sloyan as her mother Margaret White, and Siena Agudong as Sue Snell, a high-school student and integral character in the story — also returns to an important feature of King’s book: its use of interviews and other accounts looking back at the tragedy. Instead of following Carrie’s story in a straightforward line, the series uses survivors and locals to reflect on what happened. This gives the story a more layered structure and makes the tragedy feel like an event that has continued to haunt the community.
Flanagan also expands the mythology surrounding Carrie’s abilities. In De Palma’s film, her telekinesis is presented largely as a unique supernatural phenomenon. The series instead introduces the idea of a hereditary “TK gene”, suggesting that Carrie is one of several women around the world with similar abilities.
The setting has also been updated. De Palma’s film reflected the social tensions of 1970s America, particularly school bullying, religious extremism and face-to-face cruelty. Flanagan brings the story into the present day, adding modern forms of abuse such as cyberbullying, social media harassment and the constant threat of humiliating moments being recorded and shared online.
The story itself also contains new material. The series begins with the death of Carrie’s father, Ralph White, in a workplace accident, putting his absence at the centre of the new version from the beginning. The series also reportedly changes the ending, moving away from the definitive conclusion associated with De Palma’s film and leaving room for a possible second season.
That modernisation was initially a difficult sell to Stephen King. When Flanagan first approached him about adapting "Carrie" again, King reportedly responded bluntly: “Leave her alone.” He believed the story had already been told several times and questioned the need to do another adaptation.
Flanagan eventually won King over by explaining why the story could work in the 21st century. Teenagers today face forms of cruelty that did not exist when King wrote the novel. King’s reaction to the finished series suggests that Flanagan succeeded. After seeing an advance screening, he praised the adaptation on Threads, calling it “brilliant” and saying its commentary on social media was “shocking and true.”
