As summer heats up, some cool book-to-screen adaptations are headed to big and small screens. Keep an eye out for Kirkus’ upcoming, in-depth columns on Ballard, a new Prime Video spinoff of the hit series Bosch: Legacy, based on police-procedural novels by Michael Connelly and starring Maggie Q (premiering July 9), and I Know What You Did Last Summer, a theatrical sequel to the 1990s horror film franchise based loosely on a 1973 novel by Lois Duncan (premiering July 18). Meanwhile, here are four more movies and shows coming in July:

July 11: Abraham’s Boys: A Dracula Story (theatrical film premiere)

This new horror film is based on a short story from Joe Hill’s 2007 collection,20th Century Ghosts. (The anthology also featured “The Black Phone,” which was made into a movie that appeared on the list of our favorite adaptations of 2022.) In Hill’s tale, Dutch doctor Abraham Van Helsing—from Bram Stoker’s 1897 classic, Dracula—is living with his sons in America; when the boys become aware of their father’s deeds as a vampire hunter, he attempts to teach them about his grisly occupation. Titus Welliver—who also briefly appears as Los Angeles ex-cop Harry Bosch in Ballard—plays the grimly violent Van Helsing, and his intense acting style seems like a good fit for the character. Director Natasha Kermani previously helmed the thoughtful and frightening home-invasion thriller Lucky (2020), so this new offering is sure to be worth a watch.

July 13: The Institute (series premiere, MGM+)

Joe Hill’s father, Stephen King, has had several of his own works adapted for film lately. His vampire novel, ’Salem’s Lot(1975) was the basis for a lively movie on the streaming service Max last October; his short story “The Monkey,” from the 1985 collection Skeleton Crew, got the feature-film treatment in February; and “The Life of Chuck,” a novella from 2020’s If It Bleeds, yielded another wonderful movie, released just weeks ago. (Films based on two of his early novels, The Long Walk and The Running Man, are set to hit theaters later this year.) This streaming-series version of 2019’s The Institute—in which superpowered kids are abducted and brutally trained by members of a shadowy organization—also looks promising, even if the story recycles elements from King’s previous works (particularly 1980’sFirestarter). Its executive producers include the author and Lost’s Jack Bender; the cast includes the always-entertaining Mary-Louise Parker in a villainous role, as well as Ben Barnes, who was a highlight of the fine Netflix series Shadow and Bone.

July 16: The Summer I Turned Pretty (Season 3 premiere, Prime Video)

In Jenny Han’s coming-of-age YA novel The Summer I Turned Pretty (2009), a teenager named Isabel, nicknamed “Belly,” looks back on past beach-house summer vacations, exploring her relationships with boys she’s known for years. The first two seasons of this streaming series, starring the charming and talented Lola Tung, adapted that book and its sequel, It’s Not Summer Without You (2010). This final season takes on the last installment of the trilogy, We’ll Always Have Summer (2011), in which Belly, now a college student, receives a marriage proposal from her boyfriend, Jeremiah (played by Gavin Casalegno), as she struggles with unresolved feelings for his older brother, Conrad (Christopher Briney). Now that it’s ending, this thoughtful romantic drama will be missed by fans, but it will be interesting to see what roles Tung takes next; first up is a supporting turn in a very different kind of summertime tale: the aforementioned I Know What You Did Last Summer.

July 23: Washington Black (series premiere, Hulu)

 In a starred review, our critic called Canadian author Esi Edugyan’s 2018 historical adventure “a thoughtful, boldly imagined ripsnorter that broadens inventive possibilities for the antebellum novel.” It tells the story of George Washington “Wash” Black, an enslaved 12-year-old boy in 1830s Barbados who escapes to the United States via a hot-air balloon with Christopher “Titch” Wilde, the brother of his enslaver. This Hulu series features Eddie Karanja and Ernest Kingsley Junior in the title role at different ages, and they’re joined by a stellar cast that includes Lucifer’s Tom Ellis as Titch and American Fiction’s Sterling K. Brown (who’s also an executive producer). The show’s trailer promises a sweeping saga with elements of Steampunk and pirate fiction—an offbeat combination that’s sure to draw in fans of many genres.

David Rapp is the senior Indie editor.