It’s no accident that Stephen King is one of the most heavily-adapted writers in history. From fantasy epics and small-town horrors to psychological thrillers and far-out sci-fi romps, there’s a King story for everyone.
It certainly helps that King is also one of the most prolific writers around. Since 1974, with the publication of Carrie, King has published 58 novels and more than 200 short stories, winning an entire Wikipedia page of awards and earning himself the title of The King Of Horror. The man has been giving us nightmares for as long as we can remember and there’s no sign of him slowing down yet.
With influences ranging from writers like Richard Matheson, Edgar Allan Poe and H.P Lovecraft to Hollywood B-movies, 50’s anthology shows and midwest Americana, King’s style has always been uniquely cinematic – lending itself naturally to dozens of screen adaptations over the last four decades including classics like Carrie, The Shining, The Dead Zone, Misery, The Shawshank Redemption, The Mist and, most recently, It.
But he’s not done yet…
Creepshow
Remember when King was turned into a plant monster from outer space? The original Creepshow, a collaboration between King and George A. Romero (Dawn of the Dead), proved to be a match made in (scary) heaven.
An homage to classic EC and DC horror comics, Romero and King created a horror anthology movie masterpiece that still stands as one of the best in the genre. A sequel was made in 1987 (and another, awful, one was made in 2007 without any involvement from King or Romero), but The Walking Dead creator Greg Nicotero is now turning it into a new horror anthology TV show for AMC’s streaming service, Shudder.
Each episode will have different writers and directors, with Nicotero helming the first story as well as serving as showrunner and special effects guru – with all creature and make-up effects provided by his company, KNB.
“Creepshow is very close to my heart!” said Nicotero last month. “It is one of those titles that embraces the true spirit of horror… thrills and chills celebrated in one of its truest art forms, the comic book come to life! I’m honored to continue the tradition in the ‘spirit’ in which it was created”.
The show is in development now, and is set to premiere sometime in 2019.
Doctor Sleep
The adaptation of King’s sequel to The Shining is due out on Jan. 24, 2020. The film is directed by horror auteur Mike Flanagan, who helmed Oculus and Hush, and who recently directed another King adaptation on Netflix, Gerald’s Game.
Doctor Sleep was written in 2013, 36 years after the publication of The Shining, and stars Danny Torrance as a grown man still coping with the aftermath of what happened at the Overlook Hotel. Like his father, Dan struggles with alcoholism and anger management, but eventually gives up drinking and settles down in New Hampshire. He develops a psychic link with a 12-year-old girl named Abra Stone, who is even stronger in “the shining” than he is. Over the course of the novel, Dan discovers that Abra is being hunted by a tribe of psychic vampires who want to feed off of her lifeforce, and it’s up to him to protect her.
Ewan McGregor has been cast as Danny, alongside Rebecca Ferguson as the villainous Rose the Hat, with Zahn McClarnon (Westworld, Fargo) as her right hand man, Crow Daddy.
Crucially, Doctor Sleep marks the arrival of a potential “Shining Trilogy” from Warner Bros., which is also reportedly still producing The Overlook Hotel, although that seems to have completely stalled since it was first announced back in 2015.
Firestarter
This isn’t the first time a girl discovers she has crazy powers in a King novel nor would this be the first Firestarter film – the original starred little Drew Barrymore back in 1984. The remake is currently in pre-production with Fatih Akin at the helm, following up his Golden Globe winner In the Fade.
The story is about a father and daughter with unnatural powers foisted on them by a secret government organization called The Shop. The duo escape, and The Shop wants them back so they can carry on meddling.
The Shop turn up in several of King’s works, which could make the film another vital part of the expanded Stephen King cinematic universe. The idea for the new adaptation is to give the film more edge than the original – with rumours already of a potential franchise.
Hearts In Atlantis
Variety reports that director Johannes Roberts (The Other Side of the Door) will adapt King’s short story, Hearts In Atlantis, for the big screen.
Nope, you haven’t seen it already – that was the confusingly titled 2001 film, Hearts In Atlantis, which starred Anthony Hopkins in a retelling of two King short stories called Low Men In Yellow Coats and Heavenly Shades Of Night Are Falling. Even more confusingly, both stories were published in a collection called Hearts In Atlantis – which also included another short story called, wait for it, Hearts In Atlantis.
Hopefully someone will change the title before it makes it to the screen, but the real Hearts In Atlantis is a coming-of-age story that takes place at the University of Maine during the Vietnam War era. Main character Peter lives in an all-male dormitory where all of the students have become obsessed with playing the card game, Hearts.
Interestingly enough, a character from the Low Men In Yellow Coats, Carol Gerber, also appears in Hearts In Atlantis as a college student, so there might at least one connection between the two otherwise unrelated movies. According to Variety, King himself has given his approval to the adaptation, although it’s not clear if he’s involved in any way with the project.
“As a teenager, discovering Stephen King’s books and their cinematic counterparts was what led me to want to become a filmmaker,” said Roberts. “The story Hearts In Atlantis is my favorite piece of King’s writing. Turning this story into a movie had been a lifelong dream.”
At the moment, the project seems to have stalled in pre-production, but it’s still listed as being in development.
In the Tall Grass
King and (son) Joe Hill’s In The Tall Grass is a short story originally published in Esquire and then released as an ebook – now set to be a movie from Splice director Vincenzo Natali.
Patrick Wilson, Laysla De Oliveira and Harrison Gilbertson have all signed on for the leads in the film that’s heading for Netflix in 2019.
The story follows a brother and sister as they drive around the Kansas countryside, getting drawn into a creepy rural horror when they stop to investigate a child’s scream in the middle of a field.
“Who would think that grass could be frightening,” says Natali. “Trust Stephen King and Joe Hill to find a way. They have transformed an otherwise innocuous Kansas field into a stage for some of the most disturbing horror fiction I have ever read.”
It: Chapter 2
The new adaptation of King’s It is being split into two, and the first, which told the story of the Losers’ Club when they were kids, arrived last year to rave reviews and record breaking box office numbers.
Filming is already underway on Chapter 2 and now the first footage for the grown-up Losers Club has been revealed at San Diego Comic-Con. The footage hasn’t been released yet but the scene shown sees the group reunited in a Chinese restaurant, gathered for the first time since their summer pact in 1989, now adults who can barely recall childhood or each other. James McAvoy stands tall as Bill Denbrough, sporting a full luscious mane of hair for those wondering if McAvoy was shaving his head again (Bill goes bald in the book). He is staring incredulously at all his childhood friends gathered in one place, including Jessica Chastain as an adult Beverly, and Bill Hader as adult Richie.
Banging a tacky ceremonial gong behind him, Hader’s Richie shouts out, “What’s up losers?! So what do y’all want to talk about?” James Ransone’s adult Eddie Kaspbrak mutters “holy shit” in disbelief. The sequence is part of a sizzle reel that also includes Chastain’s adult Bev being phased by something and checking her smartphone, in a departure from the 1985-set novel.
Andres Muschietti directed the first part, and he’s on back board for the second half of the story too. After fighting and defeating Pennywise the Clown in the Summer of 1989, the young heroes made a pact to return to Derry if the monster were to ever wake up from his slumber. We know that Pennywise returns from the depths every 27 years to eat the children, which would make the new movie is set in 2016.
It: Chapter 2 will arrive in cinemas on 6th September, 2019.
The Jaunt
According to Deadline, King’s sci-fi short story about teleportation gone wrong, The Jaunt, is being optioned by Plan B, Brad Pitt’s production company – although no new news has emerged since 2015.
Andy Muschietti and Barbara Muschietti, the duo behind the It remake, are still attached to the project though, so it does seem to be on several to-do lists.
The Jaunt takes place in the 24th century, when teleportation between worlds is possible. The only catch is that travelers must be under anethesia, so that they’re not conscious for the trip. Waking up mid-trip is really, really bad news. You can probably guess what happens…
The story was first published in 1981 in Twilight Zone Magazine, and it was later collected in 1985’s Skeleton Crew, King’s second short story collection.
If it hasn’t stalled completely, this could still be a great sci-fi movie.
The Long Walk
The Long Walk takes place in a dystopian future where a totalitarian government makes 100 teenage boys participate in a sick televised contest: walking for miles until there’s only one kid left. The book was the first thing King ever wrote (under the pseudonym Richard Bachman) and it’s been screaming out for an adaptation ever since.
Frank Darabont, frequent King collaborator, secured the rights ages ago and a low-budget adaptation was on and off the cards for years. With Darabont letting his option lapse, the film is back on again under two of the book’s biggest fans – James Vanderbilt (Truth) and Bradley Fischer – who have already written the script and gotten the greenlight from New Line Cinema.
Now in pre-production, The Long Walk is expected to start filming next year.
Pet Sematary
Kevin Kolsch and Dennis Widmyer (Starry Eyes, Scream: The TV Series) are directing the long, long-awaited remake of the 1983 novel (and 1989 original film) about evil reanimated cats.
Filming wrapped on July 31st with Jason Clarke, Amy Seimetz, and John Lithgow finishing thier scenes in the titular cemetery – inconveniently built over a haunted Native American burial ground (a common problem in King stories).
“When we first started our conversations, [we] really connected around the idea of bringing the story back to the source material, to find a modern telling of the book that really spoke to some of the big scenes and big moments that Stephen King had originally written,” says screenwriter Jeff Buhler, talking to Dread Central. “As much as all of us are huge fans of the original film, there are moments that are larger than life and feel borderline campy. Our desire was to tell a really grounded, character driven and psychologically horrific version of Pet Sematary, which in my belief, is the scariest book that King ever wrote.”
Pet Sematary is currently scheduled for release on April 19, 2019.
Revival
According to Deadline, Josh Boone, The Fault In Our Stars director who plans to helm an adaptation of King’s The Stand, will first adapt another King novel – the more recent Revival, the 2014 novel about a preacher turned faith healer who opens up a portal to a much darker place than he could possibly imagine.
Mixing the work of horror writer and mystic Arthur Machen with Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Revival is a treat among King’s more contemporary offerings. Producer Michael De Luca and King himself are on board with Boone’s latest project, and the director has already submitted the script to Universal, who has first-look rights for an adaptation of the novel. Boone said of the project:
When I read Revival, I was like, man, did you write this for me? I’d been on both sides of that pendulum. I call myself a non-believer, now, and when I moved to LA, it was like Neo being pulled out of the Matrix. Oh, my god, none of that stuff is true! But it was what I’d been taught and what I believed in since childhood. I believed in the devil, in Jesus, and even now as a non-believer, I’m still fascinated by that world and Revival is the scariest thing he’s written since Pet Sematary.
EW is reporting that Samuel L. Jackson has been cast in the movie as preacher Charles Jacobs. In the novel, Jacobs discovers a “miraculous” way to cure people’s ailments by using electricity in his increasingly strange experiments. In the process, Jacobs, in true King fashion, unlocks a power even he can’t control… In an interview with Creative Screenwriting, director Josh Boone revealed that Russell Crowe is also attached. No word on the rest of the cast or a release date just yet, but we’ll keep you updated!
The Stand
Josh Boone is directing and writing this one, too, although we won’t believe it until we actually see it – since The Stand has been almost adapted a dozen times already since it was written in 1978. It did come to the screen in 1994 in an interesting, if muddled, miniseries that probably arrived a decade or so too early to do the book justice, but fans have been waiting for a “proper” version for too long already.
Boone originally handed a treatment of the film to WB that proposed a one-film adaptation for an estimated budget of $87 million. As of Nov. 20, he suggested (or confirmed, depending on how much you like to believe from Hollywood) on Kevin Smith’s Babble-On podcast that WB wanted him to turn the book into a series of four films. Apparently, Boone even got King’s approval. Interestingly enough, King told MTV in October that this adaptation will take more than one film to complete. There’s even talk that there might even be an 8-part miniseries before the movie hits theatres – or even that the whole book might head to TV now instead.
Whatever anyone wants to do with The Stand, it’s certainly going to be long enough. A superflu called “Captain Trips” wipes out most of the world’s population in King’s 823-page opus about the apocalypse, evil wizard hippies and vampires.
Sleeping Beauties
King’s 2017 novel was optioned for a TV series before it even came out – such is the weight his name now wields in Hollywood.
The book, which he penned with his other son Owen King, tells the story of a nightmare near future where women suffer from a horrific sleeping disease and looks at how it affects the men of a small Appalachian town.
The series will be exec produced by Michael Sugar and Ashley Zalta, who are also collaborating on Netflix series’ Maniac, but no news has emerged since the deal was signed a year ago.
The Tommyknockers
“It’s an awful book” King told Rolling Stone in 2014. “That was the last one I wrote before I cleaned up my act. And I’ve thought about it a lot lately and said to myself, ‘There’s really a good book in here, underneath all the sort of spurious energy that cocaine provides, and I ought to go back.’ The book is about 700 pages long, and I’m thinking, ‘There’s probably a good 350-page novel in there.'”
Clearly, producers James Wan, Roy Lee and Larry Sanitsky think so too, and a movie adaptation of the novel is now in the works through Wan’s Atomic Monster company.
“It is an allegorical tale of addiction, the threat of nuclear power, the danger of mass hysteria, and the absurdity of technical evolution run amuck,” Sanitsky told Variety, returning to the book after his own dubious 1993 TV miniseries. “All are as relevant today as the day the novel was written. It is also a tale about the eternal power of love and the grace of redemption.”
The film, about a small American town that starts going to hell after someone finds a weird set of cubes in the woods, is now headed for production.