Random Things that Stephen King Has Said About Movie Adaptations Of His Work (15 items)

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  (#11) Children of the Corn

  • Linda Hamilton, Peter Horton, R. G. Armstrong, Courtney Gains, John Philbin, Julie Maddalena, John Franklin, Mitch Carter, Robby Kiger, Eric Freeman, Anne Marie McEvoy, Jonas Marlowe, Corey Frizzell, Teresa Toigo, Dan Snook, Patrick Boylan, Dennis Carl, Suzy Southam, D.G. Johnson, Elmer Soderstrom, David Cowen

  Children of the Corn follows a couple who heads into a small town in Nebraska, where they find the children have taken out all the adults. The movie led to nine sequels that do not have King's stamp of approval.

  Despite the success of the original film, King notes, "I could do without all of the Children of the Corn sequels. I actually like the original pretty well. I thought they did a pretty good job on that.”
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  (#13) Firestarter

  • Drew Barrymore, Heather Locklear, Martin Sheen, George C. Scott, Louise Fletcher, Robert Miano, Art Carney, David Keith, Moses Gunn, Freddie Jones, Leon Rippy, Dick Warlock, Antonio Fargas, Drew Snyder, George P. Wilbur, Curtis Credel, Jeff Ramsey, John Sanderford, Nina Jones, Steve Boles, Laurens Moore, Stanley Mann, Carey Fox, Etan Boritzer, Orwin C. Harvey, Jack Magner, Wendy Womble, William Alspaugh, Scott R. Davis, Joan Foley, Larry Sprinkle, Keith Colbert, Cassandra Ward-Freeman, Lisa Anne Barnes, Anne Fitzgibbon, Carole Francisco

  Firestater is the story of a pyrokinetic girl (Drew Barrymore) who doesn't know the extent of her own power. A couple of years after the film was released, King commented that it was "one of the worst [adaptations] of the bunch, even though in terms of story it's very close to the original. But it's flavorless; it's like cafeteria mashed potatoes.” 
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  (#2) The Shawshank Redemption

  • Morgan Freeman, Rita Hayworth, Tim Robbins, Clancy Brown, James Whitmore, William Sadler, Jeffrey DeMunn, Bob Gunton, David Proval, Gil Bellows, Jude Ciccolella, Mark Rolston, Paul McCrane, Ned Bellamy, Frank Medrano, Brian Delate, Don McManus, Bill Bolender, Joseph Ragno, Neil Giuntoli, Larry Brandenburg, Ken Magee, James Babson, Neil Summers, Rohn Thomas, Alfonso Freeman, V.J. Foster, Dion Anderson, Brian Libby, Gary Lee Davis, John D. Craig, Richard Doone, Dorothy Silver, Brian Brophy, Joe Pecoraro, Alonzo F. Jones, Alan R. Kessler, Paul Kennedy, James Kisicki, Robert Haley, Fred Culbertson, Mack Miles, Brad Spencer, Michael Lightsey, John R. Woodward, John Horton, Charlie Kearns, Gordon Greene, Ron Newell, Renee Blaine, Eugene C. DePasquale, Claire Slemmer, Scott Mann, Dennis Baker, Morgan Lund, Harold E. Cope Jr., John E. Summers, Donald Zinn, Dana Snyder, Cornell Wallace, Rob Reider, Chuck Brauchler

  The Shawshank Redemption is based on King's short story "Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption," which is about a man falsely imprisoned for murder. King wasn't initially sold on the film; when Frank Darabont presented him with the script, he thought it was "too talky. It’s great, but it’s too much talking." Eventually he had a change of heart and in 2014 he wrote:

  I never thought he'd get it produced, because it was too textured and novelistic. When I first saw it, I realized he'd made not just one of the best movies ever done from my work, but a potential movie classic. That turned out to be the case, but he continued working almost up to the moment the film was released. Shawshank is its own thing... and I'm delighted to have been a part of it.
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  (#5) Pet Sematary

  • Stephen King, Fred Gwynne, Denise Crosby, Susan Blommaert, Miko Hughes, Dale Midkiff, Blaze Berdahl, Mary Louise Wilson, Brad Greenquist, Chuck Courtney, Michael Lombard, Kavi Raz, Kira Willoughby, Peter Stader, Beau Dakota Berdahl, Mara Clark, Liz Davies, Lisa Stathoplos, Richard Collier, Matthew August Ferrell, Donnie Greene, Mary R. Hughes, Elizabeth Ureneck, Chuck Shaw, Andrew Hubatsek, John David Moore, Dorothy McCabe, Kara Dalke, Eleanor Grace Courtemanche, Lila Duffy

  In Pet Sematary, Fred Gwynne headed a cast of otherwise relatively unknown actors in a story about a father who deals with death by burying his loved ones in a rural pet cemetery known to resurrect its tenants.

  When asked about this 1989 adaptation of his novel, King said:

  Dale Midkiff is stiff in places. I think Denise Crosby comes across cold in places. I don't feel that the couple that's at the center of the story has the kind of warmth that would set them off perfectly against the supernatural element that surrounds them. I like that contrast better.

  I think it does what horror movies are supposed to do. It's an outlaw genre. It's an outlaw picture. A lot of the reviews have suggested very strongly that people are offended by the picture, and that's exactly the effect that the horror movie seeks.
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  (#3) The Shining

  • Jack Nicholson, Shelley Duvall, Scatman Crothers, Barry Dennen, Barry Nelson, Anne Jackson, Danny Lloyd, Joe Turkel, Tony Burton, Philip Stone, Robin Pappas, David Baxt, Louise Burns, Lisa Burns, Lia Beldam

  Most people think The Shining, Stanley Kubrick's murderous ode to the haunted Overlook Hotel, is a horror classic. King, however, describes it as "a big, beautiful Cadillac with no engine inside." He thinks the characters are all wrong, calling Wendy Torrance (Shelley Duvall) "this sort of screaming dishrag." He elaborates:

  The character of Jack Torrance has no arc in that movie. Absolutely no arc at all. When we first see Jack Nicholson, he’s in the office of Mr. Ullman, the manager of the hotel, and you know [immediately] he’s crazy as a sh*t house rat. All he does is get crazier. In the book, he’s a guy who’s struggling with his sanity and finally loses it. To me, that’s a tragedy. In the movie, there’s no tragedy because there’s no real change. The other real difference is at the end of my book the hotel blows up, and at the end of Kubrick’s movie the hotel freezes. That’s a difference.
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  (#7) The Green Mile

  • Tom Hanks, Gary Sinise, Sam Rockwell, James Cromwell, Michael Clarke Duncan, David Morse, Patricia Clarkson, Bonnie Hunt, Harry Dean Stanton, Graham Greene, Michael Jeter, William Sadler, Paula Malcomson, Barry Pepper, Jeffrey DeMunn, Doug Hutchison, Dabbs Greer, Bill McKinney, Brent Briscoe, Eve Brent, Philip Hawn, Scotty Leavenworth, Van Epperson, Bill Gratton, Rachel Singer, Ted Hollis, Brian Libby, Tommy Barnes, Gary Imhoff, Rai Tasco, Christopher Joel Ives, Garth Shaw, Robert Malone, Dono Langley, Gower Mills, Mack Miles, Edrie Warner, Rebecca Klingler, Dee Croxton, Bailey Drucker, James Marshall Wolchok, Evanne Drucker, Katelyn Leavenworth, Toy Spears, Tim Smith, Todd Thompson, David E. Browning, Bill Craddock, Dora Tate, Samual Tate, Christopher Greenwood

  The Green Mile is another King prison story, but is very different than The Shawshank Redemption. When inmate John Coffey (Michael Clarke Duncan) is brought into custody for the murder of two young girls, Paul Edgecomb (Tom Hanks) and his fellow guards notice that he is able to perform healing miracles that lead them to question his guilt.

  King loved director Frank Darabont's adaptation:

  I would have to say that I was delighted with The Green Mile. The film is a little "soft" in some ways. I like to joke with Frank that his movie was really the first R-rated Hallmark Hall of Fame production. For a story that is set on death row, it has a really feel-good, praise-the-human condition sentiment to it. I certainly don’t have a problem with that because I am a sentimentalist at heart.

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