Stephen King Shares His Thoughts on Several of The TV Shows Based on His Work
Horror author Stephen King recently sat down with The New York Times to discuss several of the TV shows that have been made that were adapted from his work. It’s really interesting to get some insight from King on these projects and what he really thinks of them. Some of these shows were great, others were awful, and you can read what King had to say about them below.
IT - 1990
“I liked that series a lot, and I thought Tim Curry made a great Pennywise. It scared the [expletive] out of a lot of kids at that time.”
THE TOMMYKNOCKERS - 1993
“I didn’t like it; I didn’t care for it at all. It felt kind of cheap and thrown together. I felt like they missed the sense of the book.”
THE STAND - 1994
“Mick directed everything, and I wrote everything, so there was never any sense of unevenness in the way they worked — it had one single style all the way through it. Mick loved the book and was dedicated to the idea that we would just do the book, which is what we did. ABC spent a lot of money on it.”
THE LANGOLIERS - 1995
“They came up to Bangor to actually film that. I liked it because it brought money into the town, and I liked the screenplay. I can’t remember if I wrote that or not. Did I?” He didn’t.
THE SHINING - 1997
“Let’s put it this way. I dislike the film. I always have. I admire the film, and I admire Kubrick as a director, which sometimes gets lost in the mix when people who absolutely love that film take me to task. I love Kubrick as a filmmaker, but I just felt that he didn’t have the chops for this particular thing. I don’t like the arc that Jack Nicholson runs as Jack Torrance. Because it isn’t really an arc — it’s a flat line. He’s crazy from the jump.”
He went on to praise Rebecca De Mornay’s performance as Wendy Torrance, saying she “plays the way she’s written in the book,” as “the real reason I love that mini-series.”
STORM OF THE CENTURY - 1999
“That is my absolute favorite of all of them. I loved Colm Feore as Linoge, and I loved the story. They filmed it in Southwest Harbor in Maine in the wintertime and they got the snow, so you get the sense of this awesome blizzard and the people trapped in it. They did a terrific job.”
ROSE RED - 2002
“I was in a lot of pain, but I thought I’d love to do an homage to Shirley Jackson. I wasn’t delighted with the way it turned out. It didn’t have the bang that ‘Storm of the Century’ did. Some of the acting was a bit … well, maybe it was the writing.”
UNDER THE DOME - 2013
“The first few episodes were great, but the thing was, what CBS wanted was basically meatloaf — nothing too challenging, something to just fill some hours. it went off the rails and descended into complete mediocrity. It was a sad thing, but it didn’t bother me. I stopped watching after a while because I just didn’t give a fuck.”
MR. MERCEDES - 2017
“It was like we brought a stadium show to a coffee shop. I liked it a lot, but nobody saw it.”
CASTLE ROCK - 2018
“J.J. Abrams approached me and said he wanted to use the fictional town of Castle Rock as a staging area to take some of my characters and — it might sound grand to call it this — the mythos. The people involved were big fans of those books, and I liked what they did quite a lot. In the second season, they really got their feet under them. I would have liked to have seen it go on and grow a little bit.”
THE STAND - 2020
“I’ve seen some rough cuts, and I can’t really give you an opinion yet except to say that it was interesting to see it brought to the 21st century and to see some of the changes that were made. I always knew there was one more thing I had to say in that book, one more scene I wanted to write, and I finally did. And I’m happy with it.”
What are your favorite Stephen King shows? Mine include It, The Stand, The Shining, Storm of the Century, Mr. Mercedes, and Castle Rock.