The one movie Stephen King never wanted to be remade: “Frankly a dumb idea”
In Hollywood, what’s old will almost always become new again, and because the industry loves few things more than Stephen King adaptations, we’ve long since reached a point where the prolific author’s writings are being rebooted, remade, and reinvented for a new generation.
While some of them are surely untouchable, since it would take a very brave soul to remake The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile, or Stand by Me, the rest appear to be fair game. There are still many King novels, novellas, and short stories that haven’t been brought to the screen once, but that hasn’t stopped a deluge of do-overs from making their way to film and television.
There are two versions of The Shining, Pet Sematary got a sequel, a remake, and a sequel to the remake, It got a two-part movie after Tim Curry’s miniseries traumatised a generation, The Dead Zone became a TV show, with Firestarter, The Running Man, The Mist, Salem’s Lot, and The Stand some of the others that have been seen at least twice across either film, television, or both.
It says as much about the industry’s obsession with cannibalising itself as it does about King’s ongoing status as the most adaptable author in modern literature, but even though he probably earns a decent paycheque every time one of his titles is shot for screens big or small, even he believed things had gone too far, and he may have had a point.
Tinseltown’s infatuation with all things King kicked off in 1976 with Brian De Palma’s Carrie, and it was an impressive introduction. A stone-cold classic of the horror genre, the source material’s creator was suitably won over by the first feature-length adaptation, even declaring it better than his book.
Naturally, the concept was run into the ground. The Rage: Carrie 2 eventually arrived in 1999, which was swiftly followed by a made-for-TV remake in 2002, before Kimberly Peirce and Chloë Grace Moretz stepped in for De Palma and Sissy Spacek, respectively, for the 2013 film that wasn’t a patch on its predecessor.
Nobody really needed to see Carrie again, least of all King, so when he heard that yet another fresh take on the story was in the works, he confessed to USA Today that he thought it “was frankly a dumb idea.” He wasn’t wrong, in theory, but he quickly changed his mind when Mike Flanagan became involved.
Not only is he a fan of the filmmaker’s slow-burning Netflix originals, but the writer, director, and producer is also a lifelong devotee, which nobody needs to be reminded of after he helmed Gerald’s Game, Doctor Sleep, Life of Chuck, and stepped in to see if he could make a version of The Dark Tower that wasn’t shite.
At this stage, nobody knows for sure how Flanagan’s Carrie will turn out, but based on his previous forays into episodic television, expectations are high. King changed his tune about it being a “dumb idea,” but if it fails to add anything new to the four previous iterations, then maybe he’ll change it again.
