Category: Movies

Stephen King.

King is one of the world’s most successful writers… not only at getting his books published and into the hands of his millions of fans, but also at getting his novels adapted into movies and television events.

Den of Geek recently posted a list of Every Stephen King Movie and TV Show in Development.

There’s a lot of potentially fun/good stuff on the list.  Here are my top five (in no particular order:

11/22/63

The premise of this show is as Stephen King as it gets: a guy must go back in time and stop the Kennedy assassination. Anyone who’s familiar with The Dark Tower series andThe Dead Zone will recognize a recurring theme: altering the past before it affects the future.

In 11/22/63, a guy named Jake steps through a pantry that magically transports him back to 1958 — plenty of time to stop Lee Harvey Oswald from killing the President. As expected, Jake discovers on his journey that some things are better left in the past.

J.J. Abram’s Bad Robot production company has acquired the rights to adapt this novel into a TV show. Jonathan Demme (The Silence of the Lambs) was working on the script, but he dropped out over disagreements on the direction the show should take. Bummer.

Cell

This is King’s big zombie story. He’s written a couple of other short stories, including the great “Home Delivery” from Nightmares & Dreamscapes, but this is the one he will be remembered for. The zombies in Cell aren’t your typical brain-eating monsters. Instead, it’s a strange cell phone signal from an unknown source that turns most of humanity into a zombie hive mind, whose goal is to turn the remaining humans into zombies. Sure, it’s all chaos at first, but the monsters begin to organize in a weird way, kind of like in George A. Romero’s Land of the Dead.

Eli Roth (Hostel) talked about adapting this novel into a feature film a few years back, but that didn’t happen. Instead, it’s currently in production eyeing a 2015 release. It stars John Cusack, Samuel L. Jackson, Isabelle Fuhrman, and Owen Teague. The film will be directed by Todd “Kip” Williams (Paranormal Activity 2), with King and Adam Alleca (Last House on the Left remake) writing the screenplay.

The Dark Tower

If there was a Stephen King cinematic universe, The Dark Tower would undoubtedly be its Avengers. The series of books ties most of King’s book together in a very large web of monsters, magic, and alternate timelines. Inspired by The Lord of the Rings trilogy and spaghetti westerns, King created the anthem of all geekdom. The books are full of magic, gunslingers, sorcerors, battles on horseback, time-travel portals, evil A.I., vampires, demons, werewolves, and giant parasite-infested robotic bears. Why haven’t they made a movie already?

Ron Howard (A Beautiful Mind) has been trying to make this movie for years. At one point, he even tapped Javier Bardem for the lead role of Roland Deschain, the last gunslinger, who must travel to the eponymous Dark Tower in order to stop the Crimson King from tearing fabric of reality apart.

Now it looks like Russell Crowe (A Beautiful Mind) might play the role of Roland along with Idris Elba (Pacific Rim) in an unspecified role. Aaron Paul (Breaking Bad) has also met with Howard about a part. Writer Akiva Goldsman and producer Brian Grazen, both ofA Beautiful Mind fame, are also attached to move this adaptation along.

The big problem is getting a studio to finance such an ambitious project. The idea includes film and TV series that would tell the entire story in the most faithful way possible. Universal almost bought into it at one point and HBO had the television rights. Now it’s rumored that Media Rights Capital will produce the film. Who knows anymore.

The Shop

Remember when I mentioned that whole business about how cool it would be to start movie franchise revolving around The Shop? Well, they’re getting their own TV series thanks to TNT. What is in it’s most basic form a sequel to Firestarter, will undoubtedly branch out to tell other Shop stories involving new characters with supernatural powers.

Charlie McGee will be back, once again running from an even more powerful Shop. Luckily, she’ll have a guy named Henry Talbot, a former Shop employee, to guide her through her life as a fugitive.

The project is written by Robbie Thompson (Supernatural) and produced by James Middleton (Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles), Jaime Paglia (Eureka) and Thompson.

The Stand

A superflu called “Captain Trips” wipes out most of the world’s population in King’s mangum opus. It’s all about surviving the apocalypse for the main characters in this monstrous novel. But it’s not just a pandemic the survivors have to worry about. There’s real evil out there. Enter Randall Flagg, the most notorious villain in the King universe. The evil wizard hippie dude has shown up in many of King’s books and stories to f*** things up for the main characters. But The Stand is the best of those books, a true examination of good and evil.

Josh Boone is directing and writing this one, too. Nat Wolff (The Fault in Our Stars), who has already worked with Boone, is rumored to be in the cast. The film would be a 3-hour movie adaptation — plenty of room, but it probably won’t be as expansive as the 1994 TV series.