Dear Hollywood: 5 Remakes of Bad Stephen King Adaptations That Should Get Fast Tracked
Right now, studios are attempting to tackle an adaptation of the Stephen King fantasy series Dark Tower (which will include three movies and a television series) and a big-screen remake of the thousand-plus page epic The Stand. These ridiculous projects got me thinking: instead of attacking windmills, why not remake some of the total clunkers were based on King's stories?
If we're going to be inundated with remakes, it'd at least to be nice to see movies that make good on potential where others failed. And I'd certainly prefer these remakes to new versions of all of my favorite '70s horror movies.
Fortunately, Hollywood and I are on the same page. Sorta! Several of these projects are already somewhere in very early development. So drop the inevitable Rosemary's Baby remake, Hollywood, and get going on these.
[Note: I purposely left off movies which not even a remake could save. Hence, no Dreamcatcher (which is perfect in its own special way) or Maximum Overdrive (which was already remade anyway).]
1. Children of the Corn
Your mileage may vary, but I love the idea of a cult of creepy children sacrificing adults to some Lovecraftian monster to make the corn grow. But the 1984 movie is series of missed opportunities. From the failure to exploit the visual possibilities of the corn field, to the uneven acting, to the shoddy production value and laughable monster, the movie drags and plods along, never really offering shocks, laughs or even a sustained creepy atmosphere. Fix all of this!
Status: Followed by six sequels and a widely-panned made-for-TV remake. Ninth time is the charm?
2. The Night Flier
This little-seen movie honestly isn't bad, but the pacing is pretty tepid until the spectacular ending. Really, though, I'd just like to see someone tackle the concept of a vampire who flies his own plane once more. The vampire trend is getting old -- witches are next! -- but there's something fresh and hilarious about a vampire who owns his own jet. You can even rechristen it The Vampire Pilot or something, and get the guy behind Snakes on a Plane to direct.
Status: Nothing announced. Weird.
3. Needful Things
Max Von Sydow plays the devil , who opens up shop in (of course) a small town in Maine. With this casting and setup, I still don't understand why this movie is so tame and dull, but it is! I'd accept either a straight-up comedy remake or a horrifying one, but the middle-ground that the original version treads is unacceptable.
Status: Nothing announced.
4. Pet Sematary
Yes, the scene with the dead sister is completely terrifying, and no, I wouldn't trade that theme song The Ramones wrote for anything. indeed, there is a lot to like about this creepy, gleefully stupid movie. But at the same time, the book is widely regarded as one of King's creepiest straight-up horror stories, and the movie blows it with cheeseball acting and some baffling screenwriting choices on the part of King himself. There's potential for a horrifying, grief-stricken film here in the right hands.
Status: In Development with a script by David Kajganich, who wrote The Invasion. No director or cast.
5. It
The original TV miniseries inspired weeks or even months of nightmares in small children thanks to Tim Curry's terrifying portrayal of Pennywise, the shape-shifting, child-eating clown. Then the ending (spoiler alert) where he just turns out to be a stupid, giant spider out of a 50's B-movie quickly ensured that all children could sleep soundly again. To actually make a faithful adaptation of the novel, this would probably work better as an HBO miniseries. Which would be great! But even if the studio could deliver something as slick as the first hour and a half of the original that doesn't peter out at the end, It could become a potential horror classic.
Status: In the same place as Pet Sematary... with the same screenwriter.
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Comments
I say leave 'em alone. They are what they are. Any remakes would no doubt be just as bad, or worse.
I'd like to see something new, like The Talisman, get a shot at an HBO series.
Whoever wrote the article clearly never read "It". The creature they fought at the end of the book was also a big spider ... just only difference was It had Deadlights on the under belly. And to whoever said the miniseries was like the book.. .go read it again. They left at least half the book out.
Also, what's so funny about them attempting the make the Dark Tower series into movies? That'd be fantastic! And Ron Howard is helming it? Chances are, it'll be good. I gotta stop coming to this website. These articles are written by idiotic amateurs.
Yo, I did read "It." Yeah, the creature they fight is a spider, but he doesn't describe it as "looking like rear-projection from a 50's B-movie." The movie examines the mental part of the battle on only the surface level, which basically removes any excitement from the climax that was in the book. The book's climax is kinda silly too though.
Besides that, this article is talking about movies, not books. I don't really care if the adaptations are faithful honestly, I just want them to be good movies. Totally faithful adaptations always make me wonder what the point was.
They should film The Stand and It after they finish the entire Dark Tower series, because a lot of characters and themes (randall flagg, the Turtle, etc) connect with Dark Tower and it'd be pretty sweet to see all that again after seeing that whole epic on screen. But if Ron Howard fucks up Dark Tower i just may do the same to him 😉
wow! some ruffled feathers around this place. while i do disagree about some things in the article, the writer was correct about the literal adaptations thing. some things are better left to your own imaginations. someone elses vision sometimes just wont do. no matter how good a vision it might or might not be. having said that , the 1st adult book i ever readwas SALEM'S LOT. I was ten it was night during the summer and i was to afraid to get up and turn the light off so i stayed up until the dawn when i just managed to finish it. left a lasting impression. so much so that when the original mini-series hit C.B.S. that fall it scared me just as much. the dead boy floating in the brothers window, the grave digger (actor GEOFFERY LEWIS) sitting in the darkened corner of a bedroom the night after his own funeral. the frantic scene where DAVID SOUL rushes to tape two tongue depressors together into a cross before a new vampire can kill him. and of course the most terrifying scene of all when you 1st get to see THE MASTER, BARLOW after he crashes through the window. images from that movie were found throughout many different comics in the months to follow. yes things were changed some to fit the the technical abilities of the time but all in all it was a great adaptation and a hell of a ride that still manages to stand the test of time. the remake, adapted by King himself starring Rob Lowe and RUTGER HEUER a few years ago, was more faithful and not bad. it had some great moments but Kings true power lies not on the screen but in the written word, where he understands(maybe more then any other author ever) our own imaginations deliver the best scares. for those of you that would disagree, i point to his overall body of work and his book sales as proof. after all of that i would love to see any good adaptation of any King story. it will just never be as good as the movies we've already seen in our heads.
I hated "It" and I was a Stephen King fan back then. I realized a lot of his stories do the same thing...create a set of rules and interesting situations and then blow all those rules to heck later on in the story as if he didn't remember the rules he himself created. I am reading "The Drawing of the Three" and it does the same thing.
Hey, thanks for commenting. To a large extent, I agree. At the same time, there are so many undeniably cinematic passages in his books that have great potential on the screen, which is why I'm interested in these remakes. As I've said, I'm in favor of taking the best parts and tinkering/making up stuff until we've got a knockout movie, whether it's faithful or not. But I wrote this as a jumping off point, not a step-by-step instruction manual on how I think a perfect King adaptation should be made.
Has any read his book, "Insomnia"? I think that would be a great movie. It's definitely lengthy, but so worth it.
I can't speak to the first three, but I've read the scripts for the proposed remakes of PET SEMATARY and IT. First off, let me say Kajganich nailed PET SEMATARY. It is moving, and scary, and pretty darn faithful to the novel. The changes he made were smart and in keeping with the themes of the book. I was not surprised it was scary, given the novel, but I was surprised how sad it was. Really shook me up. The script for IT is very good, just too condensed. They really should make it into two movies, or a mini-series. All the right scenes are in the script to tell the min story, and Kajganich's ending is light years better than the original mini-series, but too many of my favorite smaller character moments are missing. I hear his original draft was 240 pages long, but Warner Bros. made him cut it down to 130. I'd LOVE to read the long one.
Has anyone read Gerald's Game. I read that book and it creeped me out so much I never read it again. I think that story would make a good HBO movie. I also like the short story The Library policeman from Four Past Midnight, I think that would make a great movie.
This is a great list. I’d love for them to do a new version of It, but only if Tim Curry plays Pennywise…he was only one in the whole of the original that was properly cast and did a great job. I’d also like to see a full on cinematic three or four movie series of the Stand, which would be epic and awesome. It’s funny, I just watched Pet Semetary off my Netflix app on the Logitech Revue (I’m a DISH customer and employee) and searched out Stephen King after that to see what else he was involved in, and found this list
Dead Zone movie is fantastic, as good as the book.
Cronenberg directed with amazing style, Chris Walken was a great Johnny Smith.
They should totally remake Cujo with a big CGI dog...kinda like Marmaduke. That would totally rulez!
Steven King movies have the same problem every movie made from a decent book has - it gets "adapted" by Hollywood bigshots who think they know (despite ample evidence to the contrary) what makes a great (as in profitable) movie. They utterly miss the point of the book and turn out garbage.
- The original Salem's Lot movie was a classic example. The King Vampire is supposed to be like Barlow in the book, an evil superhuman that toys with people before he kills them. That's scary in a way a guy with bad makeup and no lines can never be.
- Pet Sematary: the villain of that book was the thing, whatever it was, that lived in the pet cemetery. It was evil, nonhuman, and terrifying; the things that came back were just zombies, creepy but not really good or evil. The movie had only the "zombies," which were not especially interesting or scary except for a tendency to erupt in mindless violence.
When SK got big enough to start controlling his own films, I hoped things would be better; unfortunately, he turns out to be a great story teller but not much of a screenwriter.
Oddly enough, the best counterexample I've seen lately is the last Harry Potter installment: whoever wrote that understood the book. They took out stuff that bogged down the book, and didn't add anything silly; they managed to say what the book said. It was an amazing surprise after the dreadful mess that some of the earlier films were.
Wait,wait, wait. *Record stopping.* Barlow's makeup was "bad?" What planet are you from? He was beautiful-- in a sick, horror way of course...
Plus, in Pet Sematary, only the cat wasn't good or evil, just scary-looking and clumsy. The re-animated people would scream devilish obscenities, and Gage even killed people. That's not evil!?
In spite of that, the rest of your post was decent.
So what's your favorite Stephen King movie, Sleepwalkers?
why has nobody brought up 'firestarter'? i mean, in the current age of 'mutants' and super-powers, that would be fantastic. one of the best early king books, and certainly one of the worst movies, imo.
and 'the mist' was great....up until the end.
"weren't they the guys that fucked everything up?"
"yup"
"and now they're the ones saving the day?"
"yup. pretty cool, huh? hoo-rah and stuff and stuff"
"uh......yeah, awesome?"
i mean, come on....garbage
One word -- Desperation. One of King's best, and would make for a killer leading role, one of the hallmarks of King's best movies (The Shining, Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile, Misery...). Along the same lines, I think It and Needful Things were actually pretty solid, if dated, adaptations, considering it would be hard to outdo the memorably creepy performances of Tim Curry and Max Von Sydow. Granted, Desperation got a half-assed small-screen treatment by King himself, but it deserves a major release with a budget that could put an A-list actor in the leading role and do the special effects justice.
It truly is one of the best books ever written. As far as characters and drive in a story goes, it is the best. If you don't get chills from Pennywise writing in blood, "Come home come home come home," you need your head examined.
"It" was great - the first half that is. Second half was basically un-filmable by late 80s early 90s effects capabilities. The fact that it was a TV movie, and therefore had a drastically small budget, completed the handicapping it received. A new version would be great, but care must be given to the climax. Perhaps a better question would be: who is capable of bringing the book's ending to the small screen properly?
I think "Children Of The Corn" is basically beyond redemption - it was mediocre from the get-go and the numerous sequels only made it worse.
"The Night Flier" - I rented that on a lark, no idea what is was about. Pretty entertaining story, but it could be re-done and to better effect. I think the proposed idea of making it into a TV series sounds awesome though 🙂
"Needful Things" - great book, shite movie. Pretty inspired casting in it, but something vital was lost along the way from page to screen: the overall tone of the story changed from underlying sense of dread and mounting terror in the book to bizarre, not sure what it wants to be quasi-comedy on film. I still recall seeing the trailer for the first time - it was clear even then that they studio didn't know how to sell it. Re-do it only if it can be told as a straight up horror story and leave the overacting and over the top attempts at gallows humor behind.
As for "Pet Sematary" - the movie wasn't totally awful, the scares were a bit cheap though and the casting (*aside from Fred Gwynne) left a lot to be desired. The sister with meningitis or whatever her ailment was, that was scary as hell, but it was balanced out by the climax and the little kid running around with a knife and snarling - comical, and in an unintentional way, which just made it funnier. If a remake can capture the horror of the book, and a bit more attention is paid to casting, it could be absolutely terrifying.
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