Uncharted territory: the one unmade Stephen King story he thinks would make a great movie
For almost 50 years, screens big and small have never gone too long without a new Stephen King adaptation, and it reached the point a long time ago where the author’s bibliography was entered into the perpetual cycle of reboots and remakes.
It wouldn’t be unreasonable for some people to think every single one of his novels, novellas, and short stories had been snapped up, chewed up, and spat out by Hollywood, considering the number of reinventions only continues to rise steadily higher.
There have been two feature-length versions of Carrie, both The Shining and The Mist have been told in film and television, Salem’s Lot, Firestarter, and It were all remade at least once, The Dark Tower escaped development hell only to bomb before being announced for a do-over, Pet Sematary got a remake and a prequel, and Glen Powell will step up to replace Arnold Schwarzenegger in Edgar Wright’s The Running Man, which isn’t even the full extent of it.
It’s been a practice going on for so long that it’s easy to imagine ears pricking up in studio boardrooms all across Tinseltown the second King declares that he’s working on something new, with eager executives always desperate to acquire the rights to the latest spine-tingling work from one of history’s bestselling and most heavily-adapted authors.
However, there are certain King stories that have yet to make it to the screen in any way, shape, or form, and there’s one he’d really loved to see happen. It’s not from a lack of trying, obviously, with HBO purchasing the rights to mount a made-for-TV movie the year after the book’s 1995 publication, while talk of a feature was floated in 2011 before ultimately amounting to nothing.
The best anyone has to show for it thus far is an audiobook, which King finds rather puzzling. When asked by Netflix if there was a story he feels is being wasted by not joining the production line, there was one that instantly came to mind. “I don’t think anybody ever optioned Rose Madder,” he said. “Which I thought would’ve made a great movie.”
A story rooted in the terrors of domestic violence with a fantastical element born from Greek mythology, the title character, Rosie Daniels, suffers a miscarriage after being assaulted by her husband Norman while four months pregnant, feeling increasingly trapped and unable to run away due to her fears that he’ll easily track her down because he’s a police officer.
Eventually taking the plunge and fleeing her abusive marriage after years of misery, a mysterious painting transports her to an alternate reality with mind-altering and dangerous results. A combination of character pieces, serial killer thriller, horror, and fantasy, it ticks many of the boxes associated with King all at once. However, it might be a touch too unwieldy for a movie because there’s a lot going on, but a miniseries might be able to do it justice.
Then again, if it’s gone almost 30 years without being made, then maybe nobody’s ever been all that interested.
