Summer TV excitement: Getting ready for 'Under the Dome'

For those of you who love Stephen King, you know: It's apparently almost impossible to adapt his best works on the big or the small screen. Yes, there are exceptions (The Shining and Carrie come to mind), but for the most part, I've been quite disappointed. It's incredibly rare to love a movie more than the book that film is based on, but it does occasionally happen -- but not with King, and not with me.

Now, however, I'm filled with fan girl optimism, as CBS preps to air the long-anticipated television miniseries Under the Dome, based on Stephen King's 2009 sci-fi/horror thriller. If you haven't read the book yet, you might want to get cracking. As Erika B. so astutely points out, many of us engage in that race to finish a book before a movie version is released.

Gatsby is one thing, but just try to get through a King book in a couple of days...you'll wind up sleep deprived, cranky and probably more than slightly crazy. And Under the Dome comes in at just over a whopping 1,000 pages. Stop reading this right now and grab your Kindle immediately, because you are majorly running out of time. Under the Dome premieres on June 24. Tick tock.

We saw some pretty awesome movie trailers while waiting to see Iron Man 3 last weekend, including an extended look at Under the Dome. As soon as the segment began airing, a hush fell over the (very crowded) theater. I got all goose-pimply, I'll admit. Here is the latest (shorter) trailer for Under the Dome:

Under The Dome - Watchtower (Preview)

I really enjoyed reading Under the Dome, and I've always believed that Stephen King is at his best when he's dealing with ongoing chaos, which is precisely what happens in this novel. I loved the first half of this book, but things got terribly messy toward the end. I'm hoping that they clean up the ending a bit. Of course, I wouldn't mind dialing down the melodrama, but I doubt that's going to happen. This is a CBS drama, after all.

I'd love to hear what some fellow Stephen King fans think about this TV adaptation of Under the Dome. Are you eagerly awaiting the 13-episode series? Do you believe, just based on what you've seen thus far, that they're going to get this right?

Photo courtesy of Screenrant.com