A Complete History of the Film and Television Adaptations from The

Illustrated with a fabulous array of familiar and unusual iconography, this is a complete account of the films and television series adapted from the work of Stephen King — the literary Steven Spielberg. Including fresh A Complete History of the Film and Television Adaptations critical analysis, interviews, making of stories and biographical elements, from the Master of Horror it is a King completist’s dream and a set text for any movie fan. AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY PUBLICATION Autumn 2020 Ian Nathan, who lives and works in London, is one of ILLUSTRATIONS 200 full-colour the UK’s best-known writers on fi lm. He is the best-selling PRICE £25 author of nine books, including Alien Vault, the best-selling EXTENT 240pp history of Ridley Scott’s masterpiece, biographies on FORMAT 275 x 215mm Tim Burton, The Coen Brothers and Quentin Tarantino, and BINDING Hardback Anything You Can Imagine: Peter Jackson and the Making of TERRITORIES UK Commonwealth Middle-earth. He is the former editor and executive editor of Empire, still the world’s biggest movie magazine, where he remains a contributing editor. He was also creative For further information, please contact: director of the Empire Awards for fi fteen years, as well as Palazzo Editions Limited producing television documentaries, events, and launching 15 Church Road Empire Online. He also regularly contributes to The Times, London SW13 9HE The Independent, The Mail on Sunday, Cahiers Du Cinema, Tel +44 (0)208 878 8747 Talk Radio and the Discovering Film documentary series Email [email protected] on Sky Arts. www.palazzoeditions.com STEPHENKING_BLAD_COVER.indd 1 19/03/2018 18:04 What do you consider is the best fi lm adaptation of your work? ‘Probably Stand by Me. I thought it was true to the book, and because it had the emotional gradient of the story. It was moving. I think I scared the shit out of Rob Reiner. He showed it to me in the screening room at the Beverly Hills Hotel. You have to remember that the movie was made on a shoestring. It was supposed to be one of those things that opened in six theatres and then maybe disappeared. And instead it went viral. When the movie was over, I hugged him because I was moved to tears, because it was so autobiographical. But Stand by Me, Shawshank Redemption, Green Mile are all really great ones. Misery is a great fi lm. Delores Claiborne is a really, really good fi lm. Cujo is terrifi c.’ Stephen King, 2014 Long ago (well, 2003) in a Los Angeles hotel regularly than King. There are sixty-fi ve existing room, I sat before the esteemed screenwriter and movies, thirty television shows, and seven Hollywood sage William Goldman. He was there individual episodes (of multi-author anthology to offer pearls on his forthcoming adaptation of shows like The Twilight Zone) based on his work. Stephen King’s Dreamcatcher – a typically unusual This is partly a matter of the sheer volume and approach to the alien invasion saga that fritters popularity of his output over the years, but it goes away its primal beginnings, pedigree fi lmmakers deeper than that. and fi ne cast (as well as Goldman, it was directed There is an industry that surrounds King, one by Lawrence Kasdan, and featured Damien Lewis, that embodies the very nature of Hollywood, Morgan Freeman and Thomas Jane), departing the strange allure of the horror genre, and the from the book and throwing its lot in with some accessibility of his folkloric depiction of mundane, studio-mandated spectacle. If this was America. The concept of the King adaptation a miss, Goldman had, of course, adapted Misery lies at the core of what we understand as and Stand by Me. He was, and remains, one of the screen entertainment. most respected voices on the subject of King, and And yet there has never been a book that has ABOVE caption text goes here spoke with the soft, smoky, amused tones of the even attempted to encompass the world of the ommollore que ne lab inctae labor as fi nely tuned mind making the best of selling an King adaptation. est, qui dis alicit veles ent omnimaxim evident car crash as was contractually obliged. To cut to the chase, I plan to watch and re- voluptatem eniminv endipsapicid What stays with me was the stone-clad watch every single professional adaptation of conviction with which he informed me that, his work with the intention of accumulating a ‘Stephen King is as important to American complete history of King adaptations: the good, folklore as Mark Twain.’ the bad, the ugly and the demented. From the No single author has been adapted more glow of classics like Carrie, Misery, Stand by Me, 2 STEPHEN KING AT THE MOVIES STEPHENKING_PRESENTATION_01.indd 2 19/03/2018 18:05 ‘Stephen King is as important to American folklore as Mark Twain.’ William Goldman The Shining and The Shawshank Redemption to the greater stock. The fi rst chapter of It (itself the regrettable attempts at Cat’s Eye or The Running second adaptation of King’s small-town epic Man. Along the way unearthing hidden gems like after the 1990 miniseries) made a gargantuan Dolores Claiborne or Gerald’s Game. Then doing $700 million worldwide (off a paltry budget of the same with the output of television miniseries $35 million), putting into motion a sequel that such as Salem’s Lot (both 1979 and 2004 will be with us towards the end of 2019. The versions) or Under the Dome or Bag of Bones, and young director of Gerald’s Game, Mike Flanagan, compilation series like Nightmares has been commissioned to make Doctor Sleep, and Dreamscapes. King’s recently published sequel to The Shining. This is not a book about King and his writing, Whether it will follow in Kubrick’s footsteps or not directly. It is a book about what King has stick to the author’s chosen path is yet to be seen. given fi lmmakers (and by that I include television This year also sees the arrival of the J.J. Abrams- makers) willingly or otherwise. As is often the produced series Castle Rock, a love song to King, case — and Dreamcatcher paid witness — surrounding a melting pot of his favourite small- adapting King can be fraught with peril. The town Maine setting, characters and bloody motifs. Dark Tower promised sequels and television There is an unprecedented thirty-eight offshoots, a whole fantasy universe based around potential adaptions in the works. Not all will his epic crossover saga, but fi zzled out, both make it to the screen, but many will. overcomplicated and undercooked. It takes great skill to capture the essence of King’s stories. As Kubrick proved this is not always a matter of blindly keeping faith with the text. Never has the horror maestro’s brand held INTRODUCTION 3 STEPHENKING_PRESENTATION_01.indd 3 19/03/2018 18:05 The King Pitch Jack Torrance, a struggling writer, takes a job overwintering at the isolated Overlook Hotel, along with his wife and psychic son. Slowly he begins to succumb to a psychosis that might also be resident at the hotel. DIRECTOR: Stanley Kubrick ‘Obviously people absolutely love it, and they don’t understand why I don’t. The book is SCREENWRITERS: Diane Johnson, hot, and the movie is cold; the book ends in fi re, and the movie in ice. In the book, there’s Stanley Kubrick an actual arc where you see this guy, Jack Torrance, trying to be good, and little by little he STARRING: Jack Nicholson, Shelly moves over to this place where he’s crazy. And as far as I was concerned, when I saw the Duvall, Danny Lloyd, Scatman movie, Jack was crazy from the fi rst scene.’ Crothers FORMAT: Feature film Stephen King’s public hostility toward Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of his third novel LENGTH: Release cut 144 mins.; has shown few signs of thawing with age. So what if it is now been consecrated as a American cut 146 mins masterpiece? He still can’t countenance Kubrick ‘hedging’ his bets with the supernatural, BASED ON: The Shining (novel, 1977) particularly the removal of the living topiary (Kubrick despaired the animal shapes would resemble animated Brillo) and the boiler erupting at the end, consuming the hotel in fl ames. I confess The Shining is the King adaptation I know better than any other. Or at least the one I have watched more than any other. I have studied it, pondered it, written about it at length, and listened to the abundant theories of Shining obsessives (of which there is an worrying industry), but with every revisit I seem to know it less. It may not the best King adaptation in a straight book-to-fi lm comparison; but it is the most extraordinary transmutation of the bones of any of his novels into, I’ll say it, a work of art. With disputes long past and Kubrick gone too, I struggle to see why King still won’t cut the movie any slack. Such is the metaphorical toothache he suffers over the fi lm’s adulation, he set about producing a remake, or rather a second, far more faithful adaptation at miniseries length (whose frail qualities are discussed elsewhere). King is a very smart man. And arguably more attuned to the horror genre than any person alive. Surely, he can’t be immune to the sheer after-effect of the Kubrickian method? It is a fi lm that is impossible to shake. Could it be that what we have here is the gulf between storytelling opposites, where King is hot and Kubrick cold? To put things simply, I have sided with Stanley.

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