A total of 54Stephen Kingadaptations have been released as feature films in the last 49 years, of which seven were scripted by King himself. The master of literary horror is, for whatever reason, quite selective when it comes to tackling the job of screenwriting, with just 11 movie scripts to his credit overall.
King amazingly once wrote a script for a Michael Jackson short film, the forgotten oddityGhosts, directed by legendary makeup artist Stan Winston. The prolific author also penned the teleplays for the TV movie of his bookDesperation, and the first miniseries adaptation of his epic novelThe Stand. In 1992, King contributed the original screenplay for the movieSleepwalkers, directed by his frequent collaborator Mick Garris.The seven movies Stephen King wrotebased all or in part on his own material include a single horror classic, one solid fright flick, and five disappointments.
Stephen King Writing His Own Movie Adaptations Has Only Worked Out Twice
Creepshow And Pet Sematary Are Good
King’s screenwriting career got off to a strong start. In 1982, the author teamed with legendaryhorror director George Romero forCreepshow, an anthology movie paying homage to EC comics. Of the film’s five segments, two are based on King’s short stories, “Weeds” becoming “The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill,” and “The Create” being adapted under its original title.
Featuring King himself in the role of Jordy Verrill (unfortunate casting, it can be argued),Creepshowwas a modest hit upon release, grossing $21 million on a budget of $8 million. Critics were mildly positive at the time, with noted horror-basher Roger Ebert surprisingly giving the film three stars, and its reputation has only grown over the years, establishing it as a cult classic.
Two theatricalCreepshowsequels have been made, and there’s also a TV series on Shudder
Less well-received by critics upon release was 1989’sPet Sematary, adapted by King from a book so horrific in its content, he refused for years to take it out of his drawer and publish it. Though mainstream reviewers indeed panned the film, with Gene Siskel calling it “sickening,” horror fans embraced it, pushing it to a $57 million box office gross. Today,Pet Semataryis generally ranked as one of the better King adaptations, even if the movie is criticized for going too slasher in the end.
Why Stephen King Movies Are Usually Better With Someone Else Writing The Script
King Needs Strong Collaborators
King’s work onCreepshowwas effective, perhaps because he was adapting short works, and perhaps because the vision he and Romero had for the film was strong overall. On later self-adaptations, King was not blessed with a collaborator as well-versed in horror as the man who madeNight of the Living Dead. King’s second anthology movie,Cat’s Eye, did not have any particular unifying vision, and though a few critics liked it upon release – King fan Ebert gave it three stars – it has not maintained a reputation close to that ofCreepshow.
Released the same year asCat’s Eye, the werewolf movieSilver Bulletis even less well-regarded than that tepid anthology film. King’s script for theCycle of the Werewolfadaptation was perhaps written under duress, as producer Dino De Laurentiis fired original co-writer and director Don Coscarelli, forcing the book’s overworked author to step in and quickly hammer out a screenplay. It’s unfortunate thatPhantasmdirector Coscarelli’s one shot at making a King movie didn’t happen, as like Romero, he has a solid grounding in horror, and might have turned in a classic werewolf movie.
Writing a horror-leaning script without the collaboration of an established horror director perhaps hurt King again when he adapted his 2006 bookCellalong with co-writer Adam Alleca. Eli Roth was supposed to helm that particular project, but had to drop out as he was too busy.Cellwas ultimately made into an excruciatingly dull viral outbreak thriller that got only a limited theatrical release before hitting home video.
2014’s King-scriptedA Good Marriage was, likeCell, given a small theatrical release before heading to home video. The thriller is graced with good actors in Joan Allen and Anthony LaPaglia, and a meaty premise inspired by the BTK Killer Dennis Rader, but its direction is completely uninspired, and its provocative ideas are not developed. Furthermore, if ever a King movie cried out for a different dialogue writer than King himself, it isA Good Marriage. King writes all his dialogue in his own voice, and that voice, when translated into words spoken by actors, sounds ridiculous.
A Good Marriage’s leads battle gamely to play an extreme case of marital discord, but have so many clunky things to say, they keep getting undermined. King’s weird, slangy way with words can work on-screen, as inMisery, where Annie Wilkes’ oddball way of talking becomes part of her unhinged character, but only when someone else has written the script, making selective use of the book dialog, while mostly giving the actors lines they can say and still sound like normal adult humans.
$21 million
65%
69%
$13.1 million
68%
54%
$12.4 million
43%
56%
$7.4 million
11%
50%
$57.5 million
60%
32%
20%
$1 million (Limited Theatrical Release)
17%
King has spoken extensively about his writing process over the years, revealing that he never outlines his plots, tackling the first draft with no sense of where the story’s going. This approach amounts to throwing things against the wall and seeing what will stick, which is fine if one is writing a sprawling novel, where everything doesn’t have to stick, because more ideas can just keep coming. A movie has to be much tighter, and can only survive a couple of bad scenes or off-key characters. Meticulous plotting helps a movie, but King is not a meticulous plotter.
Adaptations of King’s longer books are better when done by screenwriters who know how to boil a lot of ideas down to their essence, and plot things out in a way that works within a three-act structure. A sense of structure is not one of King’s personal strengths. He spins out ideas, some great, a lot terrible, and writes engagingly enough that readers will stick with one of his books, even if it rambles all over the place. He seems unable to distill his novels into workable scripts, perhaps because he simply does not have the right tool-set.
The Movie Stephen King Directed Wasn’t A Success Either
But At Least It’s Fun-Crazy
Only once has King endeavored to not only write but direct an adaptation of one of his own works. “Trucks” was a short story from King’sNight Shiftcollection. It told the story of a group of people trapped at a truck stop by machines that have mysteriously come to life and become murderous. King’s movieMaximum Overdrivetries taking this thin premise and making a crazy action-horror film out of it. The movie succeeds at being crazy, but does not succeed at being good.
Critics brutalizedMaximum Overdriveupon release, and audiences responded little better, the film limping to a $7.4 million gross on a budget of $9 million. King himself later bashed the movie, openly admitting in an interview withKingcastthat he was impaired at the time he directed it:
I went into it, and the thing is, at that time, I was doing a lot of cocaine and I was drinking a lot. you may tell! But, the thing is, man, I thought I knew how to make movies, and I realized if I did that again, I learned so much making Maximum Overdrive, it was like this intensive seminar.
Stephen King’ssuccessful author son Joe Hill has talked about remakingMaximum Overdrivefor the era of smart machines, so maybe there’s still a chance for the story to be redeemed. The remake could scarcely be worse than the original.
