Stephen King has had his work adapted into film well over 50 times, with many of them being huge hits, such as It (2017), The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile, Misery, and more. These adaptations have cemented King in pop culture as one of the most well known authors of our time as well as one of the top choices to adapt a movie from. However, all the excitement that comes with Stephen King’s name and modifying his work for the big screen also comes with King’s criticism.
And while King has praised the films he enjoyed, he has not held back on the ones he disliked either. Here are six Stephen King adaptions that are some of his least favorite.
6 Graveyard Shift
Paramount PicturesColumbia Tri-Star Film Distributors International
Graveyard Shift, released in 1990, is based on a story from Night Shift, a collection of short stories that King published in 1978. Graveyard Shift tells the tale of a group of men trying to clean out an abandoned textile mill until they are attacked by an onslaught of rats as well as a giant half rat/half bat creature. King was quick to call the production an “exploitation picture” that was a lesser version of his original work.
RELATED: Stephen King’s 10 Favorite Horror Movies
5 Dreamcatcher
Castle Rock Entertainment
King has gone on record saying that he not only disliked Dreamcatcher as a movie, but also disliked his 2001 novel as well. King wrote the novel shortly after being struck by a van in 1999, which landed him in the hospital and using serious painkillers to help recover. King says the influence of the painkillers affected his ability to turn out quality writing, and that the resulting movie that came out of the novel was a “train wreck”.
4 Firestarter
Dino De Laurentiis Company
1984’s Firestarter is considered “one of the worst of the bunch” by King, despite the story being very similar to the original novel. In a 1986 interview with American Film, King cited bad special effects, actors with little to no direction, and a “flavorless” feeling to the film as the main reasons why he was not a fan of it. King didn’t hold back on the lead of the film either, that David Keith “wasn’t very good” and that his wife believed the actor had “stupid eyes”. Despite these criticisms, a remake of Firestarter was released in 2022, with King revealing that he prefers the remake to the original film, with a main reason being that Zac Efron’s performance in the lead role was much better compared to David Keith’s.
3 The Dark Tower
Sony Pictures
King cites two main reasons as to why he thinks The Dark Tower failed as well as why he also did not love the film. The first reason is that it is very difficult to create a film based on a book series that is as long and complex as The Dark Tower, with nearly 3,000 pages across all books. King also said that turning the graphic, often violent novels into a PG-13 adaption did not do the film any favors either. Despite the fact that the film brought a cast with plenty of stars, it wasn’t enough to turn the film into a success. While King doesn’t absolutely hate The Dark Tower, it is definitely not one of his favorites.
RELATED: The Best Miniseries Based on Stephen King’s Books, Ranked
2 Maximum Overdrive
De Laurentiis Entertainment Group
Loosely inspired by his short story “Trucks”, Maximum Overdrive is Stephen King’s one and only film where he was the one sitting in the director’s chair. The film is about murderous trucks brought to life by a comet that struck the Earth, and has been critically panned since its 1986 release. King firmly places himself to blame for the failure of the film, as he was struggling with a heavy drug addiction at the time. King stated that he was “coked out” through all the production and that he didn’t know what he was doing. Despite the critical dislike for the film, many casual movie viewers claim that the film has a quality to it that makes it so bad, that it’s good.
1 The Shining
Universal Pictures
Easily the most famous example of a movie that Stephen King clearly dislikes, The Shining has been criticized by King for being an empty adaptation of his work, comparing the film to “a big, beautiful Cadillac with no engine inside it”. King’s criticism of the film has become all the more famous as The Shining is commonly held as one of the best horror movies of all time, as well as one of legendary director Stanley Kubrick’s best pieces of work. King’s complaints are not as much about the quality of the film as a whole, but more about how it is not as faithful of an adaptation as he hoped, claiming that Jack Torrance has no true story arc or any real changes throughout the film. However, 2019’s Dr. Sleep, a direct sequel to The Shining, helped to redeem the original adaptation, even if he still does not agree with all the decisions that were made back in 1980 when the original film was released.
