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Oculus director Mike Flanagan and writing partner Jeff Howard are working on an adaptation of Stephen King’s Gerald’s Game, it has been announced at Cannes.

The 1992 novel is a companion piece to Dolores Claiborne, which became a movie with Kathy Bates and Christopher Plummer in 1995 and an opera last year. It’s about Jessie, a woman who is trapped on a bed in a remote location after her husband Gerald has a heart attack while they are playing sex games. She is then caught in a fight for survival as a ravenously hungry dog arrives, as well as an apparition she nicknames the Space Cowboy – which brings back memories of childhood abuse.

King told the New York Post in 2000 that he’d be interested in helming a version himself; six years later Craig R. Baxley, who had directed Storm of the Century and Kingdom Hospital, noted that he was interested in working on a movie, to star Nicole Kidman as Jessie, from a script by King. The new version is not connected to either of these.

“In the tradition of Misery and Dolores Claiborne, Gerald’s Game is one of the most intense and compelling novels I’ve ever read, and this has been a dream project for many years. [Intrepid Pictures’] Trevor [Macy] and I are very excited to help translate that experience for an audience,” Flanagan explained. They are currently casting for an autumn 2014 production start.