The Regulatorsis one of the rareStephen Kingbooks that hasn’t been turned into an adaptation, but it almost made for an awesome movie with Western legend Sam Peckinpah at the helm.Stephen King adaptationswere big business during the 1980s, with movies likeCarrie,The Shiningand John Carpenter’sChristineall arriving in quick succession.
Of course, there’s never really been a time since the late 1970s whenStephen King’s bookshaven’t been adapted to the big or small screens, but the author is so prolific that there are plenty of books that are still awaiting adaptations.
Somenotable examples ofStephen King books that haven’t been adapted yetincludeRevival,The Girl Who Loved Tom GordonandInsomnia. One of the oddest would beThe Regulators, a sequel of sorts toDesperation.
King used his Richard Bachman pseudonym forThe Regulators, which involves a quiet little suburban neighborhood being laid siege to by a group of shotgun-wielding killers. It’s a meta and downright experimental novel that had its origins in an unproduced screenplay by King dubbedThe Shotgunners.
Western Icon Sam Peckinpah Almost Turned Stephen King’s The Shotgunners Into A Movie
The Wild Bunch icon wanted to make King’s Horror Western a reality
It’s wild looking back at the line-up of directors behind the earliest King movies: Brian De Palma, Stanley Kubrick, David Cronenberg etc. Sam Peckinpah was almost added to that list when he met with King about turningThe Shotgunnersinto a movie.
Like his novelThe Running Man(also published under the Richard Bachman name),King wroteThe Shotgunnersscript in a single, frenzied week. The script gathered little interest when he first shopped it around, but Peckinpah eyed it as his follow-up to 1983 thrillerThe Osterman Weekend(viaJoseph B. Mauceri).
Sam was looking for a picture to make and I had this screenplay that was called The Shotgunners which I had for a long time and went back something like five years. It was one of these feverous things that I’d written in about a week. I really like it but there was not interest in it. Sam read it, liked it a lot and suggested some things for the script that were really interesting. I thought that I could go back and do a second draft.
King has never really touched upon the differences betweenThe ShotgunnersandThe Regulators,but based on how closely tied the novel is toDesperation, it likely only shared the basic siege concept in common.
Sadly, Peckinpah’s many years of hard living caught up to him before King could start work on a second draft, with the director passing away in December 1984. In the aftermath, King decided to put the screenplay back in the drawer, where it sat for about a decade.
Sam Peckinpah Changed Westerns With The Wild Bunch
Peckinpah injected a darker edge into the Western genre
Peckinpah is almost as well-known for his offscreen antics as he is for his directing work. Peckinpah was both hailed as a genius and feared for his combative personality, which was only heightened by his drinking and drug problems.
The Wild Bunch follows the titular outlaws, an aging gang pulling off one last score before the Old West is entirely wiped out by the modern world.
He clashed often with studios and producers, so even after making hits likeThe Getaway, he had trouble getting movies made. “Bloody Sam’s” work was often as controversial as he was, including the likes ofStraw DogsandBring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia. With Peckinpah’s best Western,The Wild Bunch, he transformed the genre almost overnight.
This 1969 movie follows the titular outlaws, an aging gang pulling off one last score before the Old West is entirely wiped out by the modern world. The film is filled with vivid violence framed in glorious slow motion, withThe Wild Bunchending with a huge gunfight where about 100 people are killed in the space of five minutes.
Outside of the bloodshed,The Wild Bunchis a melancholic look at the end of the Old West, loyalty between supposed friends and bad men reflecting on their pastas they are being phased out by their present.
AWild Bunchremake has been in development hell for over a decade, with directors such as Tony Scott and Mel Gibson being attached at different times.
Peckinpah’s epic was hugely controversial upon release for its blood-soaked mayhem and graphic depiction of gunshot wounds. John Wayne famously hated it, and reviews were mixed.
Audiences may have been shocked by the violence, but it had a profound influence on the Western genre.The Wild Bunch’scynical, unromantic look at the Old West and its use of blood squibs and slo-mo were soon adopted by other Westerns, includingThe Outlaw Josey Walesand John Wayne’sBig Jake.
Stephen King Later Reworked The Shotgunners Into The Regulators
King’s Horror Western finally escaped the writer’s desk
King fans were in for a real treat on June 08, 2025, as the author published not one, but TWO new horror novels dubbedDesperationandThe Regulators. This was no coincidence either, as both books are closely linked.
The Regulatorsis kind of a “what if?” version ofDesperationthat features the same evil deity Tak and core group of characters, but follows a different story and chain of events. By all accounts,Desperationis the superior tale, thoughThe Regulatorsis notable for being a reworked take on King’sThe Shotgunnersscreenplay.
Despite being so prolific, sometimes King will sit on a concept for years or even decades before turning it into a novel. This was true ofUnder the Dome, which was published in 2009, though his first attempt at penning it went back to 1972.
The same was true ofThe Regulators, which could have sat in a drawer forever until King found a way to rework the concept. Again,tying the book toDesperationlikely resulted in radical changes from TheShotgunners' concept, though King has never been drawn on the key differences between them.
The Regulators Has Yet To Receive A Movie Adaptation
Stephen King’s Desperation hit screens in 2006
King’s regular collaborator Mick Garris (The Stand 1994) turnedDesperationinto an ABC TV movie back in 2006, with the teleplay penned by the author. Despite featuring a strong cast, including Ron Perlman, Tom Skerritt and Annabeth Gish, the movie wasn’t that warmly received and was beaten in the ratings byAmerican Idol.
It might have made sense for the same crew to turnThe Regulatorsinto a sequel movie too, but according to Garris (viaLilja’s Library), he simply had no interest in turning the book into a movie.
Even if he had,Desperation’sunderperformance probably would have killed ABC’s interest in producing one.The Shotgunnersis also notable for being King’s first attempt at penning an original screenplay, and after it failed to become a film, he wouldn’t attempt such a thing again until 1992’sSleepwalkers.
It would be a full circle journey forThe Regulatorsto become a gory Horror Western, but while there have been reports of it moving ahead, it has yet to materialize.
This was also directed by Garris, but while it has developed a cult following of its own, it is not one of the stronger King movies of the 1990s. It would be a full circle journey forThe Regulatorsto become agory Horror Western, but while there have been reports of it moving ahead - with the last update in 2022 suggesting a film could finally happen - it has yet to materialize. Maybe that’s for the best since Sam Peckinpah’sThe Shotgunnersstill sounds like the best possible version of that tale.
