The Funny Reason Horror Master Stephen King Won't Work On Certain Adaptations Of His Books [ATX Festival]

Nearly all of Stephen King's novels and a bulk of his short stories have made their way to the big and small screen over the years. After the feature adaptation of "It" became a box office hit in 2017, studios seemed to break their legs rushing to adapt King to the screen again, ushering in a King adaptation renaissance. Some of these adaptations have been good, and some of them have been ... well, not so good. As for King himself, he's mostly avoided handling the recent adaptations himself, with the exception of an episode of "The Stand" reboot and every episode of the Apple TV+ series "Lisey's Story," which King penned the scripts for.

One filmmaker who knows a thing or two about adapting King is Mike Flanagan. Flanagan achieved the seemingly possible by bringing King's "unadaptable" book "Gerald's Game" to Netflix. Then he directed "The Shining" sequel "Doctor Sleep." And while there's been seemingly no movement on the project since it was announced in 2022, Flanagan is also taking on King's epic fantasy series "The Dark Tower." But King himself has had virtually nothing to do with Flanagan's adaptations, and according to Flanagan, there's a very funny reason behind that.

Our own Ryan Scott attended the From Book to Script to Screen panel at the ATX festival in Austin, Texas, where Flanagan was in attendance. During the course of the panel, Flanagan opened up about what it's like to adapt Stephen King. Specifically, he talked about King's approach to adaptations of his work. As Flanagan puts it, King has avoided working on these adaptations because takes on his books in the past have been both "radically wrong" and "radically right." As King puts it (according to Flanagan), "the book is the book, the movie or the show is what it is ... If the show or the movie sucks, people will say 'the book is better,' and if it's great, they'll say 'of course it's great, the book is great.'"

In other words, King is understandably playing it safe and avoiding the pitfalls of adapting his own work. And he wins either way. Of course, this raises a question: is King officially done adapting his own books to screen? His "Lisey's Story" scripts were from 2021, and he hasn't penned any adaptations of his work since. Is he calling it quits for screenplays? I hope not — I hope King will tackle another script or two in the future. Hell, maybe he can write something directly for the screen again, like he did with the incest-cat-vampire movie "Sleepwalkers."