Writer Gary Dauberman told Den of Geek in June 2019 that his goal with the new version of Salem's Lot is to make vampires frightening again. He wants to get away from the sexier, more romanticized undead that have infested pop culture for much of the past quarter century, thanks to everything from Interview with the Vampire to Twilight to The Vampire Diaries.
The two films showing at the Drive-in are "The Drowning Pool" at 7pm and "Night Moves" at 9pm. Both films were released in 1975, the same year the original novel was published.
This is the fourth Stephen King adaptation that William Sadler has starred in - The Shawshank Redemption (1994) as Heywood, The Green Mile (1999) as Klaus Detterick, The Mist (2007) as Jim Grondin and Salem's Lot (2024) as Constable Parkins Gillespie.
Amongst a survey of its users, Fandango ranked this adaptation as the #1 most anticipated horror movie of 2023.
At about 57 minutes in, Mark researches vampire defense techniques from a couple of comic books. The cover and first page of the second comic book he reads is from DC Comics' House of Secrets vol 1 number 122, which hit the stands in May, 1974 with an August, 1974 cover date.