Earlier this year at the Sundance Film Festival, TheWrap asked Cynthia Erivo if there was a character that she would want to revisit.
The actress did not hesitate. Holly Gibney, she responded, the oddball private detective in HBO’s “The Outsider” who originated in a series of Stephen King novels.
“The Outsider” is one of more than 50 novels by the prolific King that have been translated into big and small screen stories, earning a staggering $3 billion and counting at the box office.
With Mike Flanagan’s “The Life of Chuck,” based on a story from King’s 2020 collection “If It Bleeds,” just hitting theaters after having won the Audience Award at last year’s Toronto International Film Festival and several more high-profile adaptations on the way, including a “Carrie” TV series and a new version of “The Running Man,” the 77-year-old author is as popular as he’s ever been.
That Erivo, at the height of her fame and amid “Wicked” success, is chomping at the bit to return to a King character speaks to the enduring power of the author as a storyteller and a mainstay of culture.
Beyond “The Life of Chuck,” about a terminally ill accountant (played by Tom Hiddleston) looking back on his life, September brings “The Long Walk,” a dystopian tale based on King’s 1979 novel of the same name (written under his Richard Bachman pseudonym) from “Hunger Games” director Francis Lawrence. And in October, “The Running Man,” based on another Bachman joint (this one from 1982) about a televised game show where humans are hunted, arrives in theaters from acclaimed director Edgar Wright and star Glen Powell.
This is on top of the success of Osgood Perkins’ “The Monkey” from earlier this year, which was based on a 1980 King short story (collected in 1985’s “Skeleton Crew”) that made nearly $70 million on a $10 million budget. It is already the third most successful Neon movie ever.
“The Monkey” pushed King’s box office total since his novel “Carrie” was first adapted for the screen in 1976 to nearly $3 billion. More than 50 of King’s novels, novellas and short stories have been turned into films, with some having been adapted more than once. He’s so prolific that there was an entire TV series, “Castle Rock,” that adapted multiple King books at once and crossed them over like a sprawling cinematic universe.
So what’s the secret behind the enduring appeal of King’s work? For one, the author has a stipulation that any creator can only hold the rights to one of his books at a time, that way adaptations don’t get logjammed. But an enduring humanity to his characters helps too.
As one top talent agent put it, “King is the most prolific horror thriller novelist of all time, and horror thriller is always a good genre to adapt into a film. And affordable too.”
King declined to comment for this story.
A history of adaptations
Adaptations and King’s original novels have been inexorably linked since the very beginning.
King’s first published novel, “Carrie,” was released in 1974, but it wasn’t until Brian De Palma’s nerve-shredding adaptation was released in 1976 that the book became a bestseller. The paperback edition sold a whopping four million copies. King told the New York Times, “The movie made the book, and the book made me.”
The novels that followed would be adapted in similar fashion. “Salem’s Lot” (1975) became a two-part made-for-television miniseries for CBS in 1979; 1977’s “The Shining” was adapted by Stanley Kubrick in 1980 (famously, King hated the auteur’s version); 1978’s “The Stand” would become another miniseries in 1994 (and again in 2020); 1979’s “The Dead Zone” was adapted by David Cronenberg in 1983. By the 1980s, King was so hot (and his books so compulsively adaptable) that the movie versions would be developed before the novel was even published – 1983 saw the release of “Christine” the novel in April and “Christine” the movie (from John Carpenter) in December.
Since then, there have been countless King adaptations on the big and small screen, many of them becoming outright classics — think Rob Reiner’s “Stand By Me” and “Misery;” Frank Darabont’s “The Shawshank Redemption,” “The Green Mile” and “The Mist;” and Andy Muschietti’s two-part adaptation of “It.” The best adaptations maintain King’s plainspoken voice, his penchant for pop culture references and a kind of old-fashioned earnestness (which can sometimes border on hokey), along with his strongly defined characters, compelling scenarios and an ability to uncannily suffuse humdrum activities with an aura of unspeakable dread.
One of the best, most unsung King adaptations was Taylor Hackford’s “Dolores Claiborne,” based on King’s 1992 novel. The movie was released in 1995 and starred Kathy Bates in her second iconic King character (after her Oscar-winning turn as Annie Wilkes in “Misery”), as a hardscrabble woman accused of killing her employer (which leads to an examination of her equally dark past).
“Dolores Claiborne” was fearlessly adapted by a young Tony Gilroy, best known today for movies like “Michael Clayton” and his sprawling “Star Wars” series “Andor.” Gilroy told TheWrap the adaptation was tough.
“The book is first person. That character is such a pure, strong flavor, and she’s in the movie. That’s the character,” Gilroy said. “That’s his. And the world is him – the dynamic of that and the eclipse and all the rest of that stuff.”
But Gilroy had to figure out how to give the original story a narrative structure that would work for the movie – he invented the visit from Dolores’ tough-as-nails daughter Selena (played by Jennifer Jason Leigh), who comes home to aid her mother. “On one hand, I was being incredibly faithful, the other hand being completely revolutionary,” Gilroy said.
He remembered worrying about what King was going to think, although his “godfather on that job” was William Goldman, who had adapted “Misery” and who, at the time, was an executive at Reiner’s company Castle Rock (named after a major location in King’s work). “They had a lot of credibility with Stephen,” Gilroy said. When they sent the script to the author, he came back with a positive response. “I know that he loved it,” Gilroy said. King then issued the greatest compliment any person adapting his work could receive: “I wish I’d done that.”
Bates also told TheWrap she looks fondly on “Dolores Claiborne” in her storied filmography. “I would have obviously loved to do more leads, more meaty roles like ‘Dolores Claiborne,’ which unfortunately did not get the attention we deserved that year,” she said.
Gilroy admitted, “I’m not really the best adapter. I’m usually a hijacker. But in that case, I think it’s weirdly true to the book and yet nothing like it. It’s really fascinating how that happened.” When we asked if he’d ever adapt another King story (Goldman went on to adapt “Hearts in Atlantis” and “Dreamcatcher”), Gilroy said that it was a possibility. “It’s always story-dependent,” he said, adding that “Misery” was “an absolutely brand-new essential story” – something that invents an entirely new type of narrative. And he’s very drawn to that idea “‘Misery’ is just a miracle of a story. If there was a ‘Misery,’ I would love to do that.”
When we talked to Perkins, he said the process of making “The Monkey” was “the happiest privilege” and that King endorsed his decision to stray from the specific plot of the short story.
“You get the greatest author of all time in the space and you get this indelible image of the monkey, which everybody feels something about,” Perkins said of his film about a toy that may or may not be responsible for horrific killings.
King didn’t expect him to follow the story beat-for-beat, Perkins said, and the filmmaker instead found a way into “The Monkey” that was both personal and profound. (Both of Perkins’ parents died in terrible ways.) He had met King for the first time the day before we spoke.
“He absolutely loves the movie,” the director said. He pointed towards King’s response on social media (it was on Threads): “You’ve never seen anything like ‘The Monkey.’ It’s bats–t insane. As someone who has indulged in bats–tery from time to time, I say that with admiration.”
The life of Flanagan
In terms of modern filmmakers adapting King, there are few as prolific and successful as Mike Flanagan.
Flanagan came from the independent horror world, but in 2016 hit it big with “Hush,” an ingenious little thriller that was picked up by Netflix out of the South by Southwest Film Festival. It would be the beginning of a streaming partnership that would ultimately include multiple series. (You probably know him as the mind behind shows like “The Haunting of Hill House” and “Midnight Mass.”)
But Flanagan has always been fascinated with the worlds that King created. And what sets him apart from other filmmakers who have built large swaths of their careers on King adaptations (Mick Garris, we’re looking at you) is that he goes after particularly difficult adaptations. These are things that nobody else has wanted to do, and he pulls them off to the delight of casual fans and King acolytes alike.
In 2017, Netflix released “Gerald’s Game,” an adaptation of a 1992 King novel about a woman (played by Carla Gugino) who finds herself handcuffed to a bed after her husband’s (Bruce Greenwood) sex game goes horribly wrong. It was deemed “unfilmable,” but Flanagan found a way in – he made her internal journey external, in a way that never seemed hackneyed, and leaned into the story’s body horror. He also didn’t shy away from the connection to another King story, “Dolores Claiborne” (there she is again!), with both taking place during the same eclipse. (Yes, it’s legally clearable but still there.)
His next adaptation was even trickier. It was a version of “Doctor Sleep,” King’s 2013 novel that served as a follow-up to “The Shining,” this time focused on an adult Danny Torrance (in the movie played by Ewan McGregor). King famously hated the Kubrick original but Flanagan wanted to make a true sequel; somehow he threaded the needle and made a movie that both Kubrick fanatics and King die-hards could appreciate.
And with “The Life of Chuck,” Flanagan does the unthinkable again, adapting a slender novella from one of King’s story collections into a big-hearted, expansive story about the power of love and how death can make you collapse an entire life – a constellation of characters, ideas, hopes, fears and dreams – into a single, tidy narrative. It’s as much about King coming to terms with his own death as it is about anything else, and it’s touching in a way few stories are these days. It’s King at his most powerful and elemental and Flanagan at his most astute and warm.
“Fundamentally the reason that Mike is good at Stephen King stories is because King and Flanagan like people and they’re rooting for people at their core. The two big things that they have in common are authenticity and accessibility,” said Bryan Fuller, creator of “Hannibal” and the writer of a 2002 TV adaptation of King’s “Carrie.”
“When I think about Mike’s work and how he crafts horror and how he crafts characters, it’s all through this ‘Our Town’ sensibility of these are people you know, who are like you and they are going to be put into scenarios that you don’t know how you would imagine making it through.”
Flanagan is currently working on a TV series adaptation of “Carrie” for Prime Video. But his biggest, most complicated King adaptation still has yet to solidify. It’s an adaptation of King’s “The Dark Tower” book series, which started in 1982 and continued with novels through 2012. It was adapted, disastrously, in 2017 into a one-off film starring Matthew McConaughey and Idris Elba.
“The Dark Tower” is the defining King work, a fantasy epic that only he could conjure and one that has acted to bind several other, seemingly unrelated King stories as well. If anyone can land this plane, it’s the guy who’s made a reputation out of tackling the most challenging King adaptations.
King forever
So what makes King as vital now as he was when he first started publishing stories (and those stories first started getting adapted)?
“The magic of Stephen King is the way he channels stories, which stems from an extraordinary understanding of humanity. When he has an idea, be it from a dream or something that he sees while out on a walk, he doesn’t map out a plot. He lets the nature of his characters dictate how key decisions and conflicts play out, and then he follows the ripples,” explained Eric Eisenberg, a managing editor for CinemaBlend who runs a weekly column called The King Beat.
“The upshot of this is that no matter how extreme his stories get, they are always grounded by protagonists and antagonists that readers can connect to, and there are no richer stakes than caring about a hero’s fate. It’s the common bond between all of the diverse titles in his half-century bibliography, and it’s what makes his stories across all mediums – in books, movies, television, comics and more – entertaining, fascinating and timeless.”
“The Life of Chuck” wrestles with King’s own fears about mortality, but few artists are guaranteed immortality the way he is. Even after he’s long gone, new filmmakers will work and rework his stories and themes, introducing new audiences, well beyond his years, to the things that made King so scarily special.
