The Resurgence of Stephen King

One will argue that over his long career, renown horror author Stephen King has never disappeared from the mainstream media but he’s never really been in the spotlight either. He’s kept quiet and continued to publish novels meant to brought about varying degrees of fright in his audiences. But not only has King given us some of the most terrifying tales every to be written, there subsequent adaptations to film have given us some the best horror films in cinema history. I honestly believe that some people forget some classic horror films are even based upon King’s novels. For example, when people look at Stanley Kubrick’s classic adaptation of The Shining, the see a classic film with one of the most terrifying performances of all time from Jack Nicolson. While they’re correct, it’s always important to acknlowedge the source material, which in many cases is King.

Why I included the term “resurgence” as the title of this post is because now that we’re in the remake, reboot or re-adapt era of Hollywood, we’re seeing Kings stories being reintroduced to a new generation of filmgoers. What kicked off this new trend (or what I believe will be a trend), was 2017’s It. What frustrated me in particular was that upon this film’s release, many people were calling this a “remake” of Tim Curry’s original mini-series adaptation. But audiences must learn to differentiate what is a remake and just an take on King’s original story. Watching the movie, I couldn’t see anything that connected the two rather, the 2017 version of the film was simply another stab at King’s source material. The man who was given the opportunity to follow up Curry’s classic portrayal of Pennywise the Dancing clown didn’t simply copy Curry, rather he created his own twisted portrayal of the character that terrified audiences. What’s most significant about this film however, was the response. It’s no secret that modern day horror movies aren’t know for their postive reviews from critics but it was quite the opposite case for this film. 2017’s It scored an 85% on Rotten Tomatoes with critics referring to it was one of the best King adaptations. Even more stunningly, it went on to become the 10th highest grossing film of 2017, making close to $700 million against a budget of just $35 million.

This same year studios tried to tackle one of King’s most famed series in The Dark Tower. While this film can be referred to as no less than a complete bomb box office-wise and from critics, it shows that studios are starting to focus on some of King’s most popular stories again. Studios even took another shot at another King classic with 2013’s Carrie, a story famed for it’s 1976 adaptation star Sissy Spacek. While certain classics aren’t to be touched such as The Shining, Misery or The Shawshank Redemption, 2017’s It has shown us that there is still an audience out there for many of King’s classic tales. Following the film’s success, studios green-lit another adaptation for one of his most frightening novels, Pet Cemetary. Despite being made into a film back in the late 1980’s, studios are now trying to copy It’s forumla by modernizing the fears and reintroducing them to a new generation of audience. Is it something that will succeed? Judging by The Dark Tower, no. Judging by It, most definitely. Either way, and as a huge fan of King’s work, I know I’ll be in line to see for myself.