10 Times Stephen King Disliked His Own Movies

Stephen King has never been one to bite his tongue, and thank goodness for that. From dissecting the horror genre and critiquing pop culture to roasting the adaptations of his own work, King is always as sharp as his storytelling. With over 60 novels, 200 short stories, and a career spanning five decades, he’s basically a literary institution at this point. His stories have haunted generations, and Hollywood has been right there with him by adapting his work into a catalog of movies. Some are iconic. Others… not so much.

Fans and critics have voiced their opinions on these adaptations for years, but it is King who often turns out to be his own harshest critic. Whether it is a movie that butchered his plot or a casting choice that missed the mark, King has expressed his disappointment more times than you’d expect. This honesty is part of what makes him so compelling.

So if you have wondered which Stephen King movies made the man himself cringe, here are 10 times he disliked his own movies.

10

‘Needful Things’ (1993)

Stephen King’s Needful Things was meant to be his grand finale for Castle Rock. A twisted love letter to small-town rot and greed. Clocking in at over 1,000 pages, it is a sprawling novel and perhaps one of King’s most intricate works. But the 1993 film adaptation, directed by Fraser C. Heston, tries to cram it all into two hours, and it shows. The story is about Leland Gaunt, a demonic shopkeeper who sells the townspeople their deepest desires in exchange for a favor.

Too Much Book, Not Enough Movie

Despite a stellar cast including Max von Sydow as Gaunt and Ed Harris as Sheriff Pangborn, the movie fails to capture the novel’s layered cynicism and slow-burning chaos. King himself called Needful Things a “disappointment” in a 2007 interview with Liija’s Library. Apparently, the movie’s rushed pacing and shallow character arcs didn’t do justice to the source material’s psychological depth, missing the point entirely.

9

‘A Return to Salem’s Lot’ (1987)

Directed by Larry Cohen, A Return to Salem’s Lot is a sequel to 1979’s Tobe Hooper-directed miniseries, Salem’s Lot, which is based on King’s novel of the same name. Unfortunately, the movie has almost nothing to do with his original novel. Instead of Ben Mears and the dread of Kurt Barlow, we get an anthropologist and his son stumbling into a vampire town that wants him to rewrite their history.

King-less Sequel That Wandered Off

A Return to Salem’s Lot is often cited as one of the weirdest and most unnecessary follow-ups to a King adaptation. There are a few quirky ideas, but the movie doesn’t really capture the atmosphere of the original. Stephen King had no involvement in this sequel and made it clear that he didn’t want any. In an interview with Time Magazine, he lumped the movie with the Children of the Corn sequels, saying:

“And in my case, more of the movies than not — if we except things like Return to Salem’s Lot, Children of the Corn 4, The Children of the Corn Meet the Leprechaun or whatever it is — if you do that, then most times you’re going to have something that’s interesting anyway.”

8

‘Dreamcatcher’ (2003)

Dreamcatcher is one of those movies where you can feel the chaos in every frame. Based on King’s 2001 novel, the film follows four childhood friends who reunite in a snowy cabin only to face an alien invasion. There’s elements involving psychic powers and body horror, and the result is a tangled mess of telepathy and possession featuring a stacked cast including Morgan Freeman, Thomas Jane, Jason Lee, Damian Lewis, and Timothy Olyphant.

Rare Case of Self-Inflicted Failure

King has been honest in expressing his disdain for this particular interpretation of his work. In a Rolling Stone interview, he admitted, “I don’t like Dreamcatcher very much,” blaming its incoherence on the fact that he wrote it while recovering from a near-fatal accident and under the influence of Oxycontin. He called it “another book that shows the drugs at work” and the movie was also panned by critics for its tonal whiplash.

7

‘Maximum Overdrive’ (1986)

Stephen King’s short story Trucks was an eerie tale about machines turning on humans, which was a metaphor for our helplessness in the changing times. But when King decided to direct the film adaptation himself, things went off the rails. Maximum Overdrive is a B-movie where Earth passes through a comet’s tail and causes machines to develop consciousness and become homicidal. A group of survivors, led by Emilio Estevez, hole up in a truck stop try to survive.

Panned For Clueless Direction

King wanted to make a “moronic” movie, and he succeeded, but not in the way he hoped. He has been brutally honest about this one. He called it a “learning experience,” and refused to ever direct another movie. Even Estevez revealed that King apologized to him multiple times over the years. In Cinefantastique and during an interview for the 2003 book ‘Hollywood’s Stephen King,’ he admitted,

“I was coked out of my mind all through production, and I didn’t really know what I was doing”

6

‘Firestarter’ (1984)

Firestarter was one of King’s early explorations of political paranoia. It tells the story of Charlie McGee, a young girl with pyrokinetic abilities, and her father Andy. They’re both on the run from a shadowy agency called The Shop because it seeks to control and destroy her. The book is tense and emotional, and while the 1984 movie starring Drew Barrymore and David Keith sticks fairly close to the plot, it loses its soul and feels off.

King Calls It “Flavorless”

In a 1986 interview with American Film, Stephen King called Firestarter “one of the worst of the bunch,” and compared it to “cafeteria mashed potatoes.” He criticized the special effects, like Charlie’s hair blowing every time she used her powers, and said he never got a satisfying answer for why it happened. He also slammed Keith’s performance, saying his wife thought he had “stupid eyes.”

5

‘The Dark Tower’ (2017)

There’s no other way to say this; the Dark Tower series is Stephen King’s magnum opus. It is a sprawling saga that ties together much of his literary universe. It is part western, part fantasy, part horror, and deeply philosophical. The story centers around Roland Deschain, the Gunslinger, on his quest to reach the Dark Tower while battling the Man in Black and other forces that stop him. The movie tries to condense this into a 95-minute PG-13 movie.

Directed by Nikolaj Arcel and starring Idris Elba as Roland and Matthew McConaughey as Walter Padick, the movie seems to have cherry-picked elements from multiple books and turned the Tower into nothing more than a background prop. Stephen King was diplomatic but honest. He sat for an interview with Vulture in 2017 and said that the challenge was to adapt a 3000-page novel into a short film, and the rating only dulled its edge. He praised screenwriter Akiva Goldsman’s effort, but also said the movie didn’t work.

4

‘Christine’ (1983)

Christine is a coming-of-age story with a bloody twist. It follows Arnie Cunningham, a shy, bullied teen who buys a beat-up 1958 Plymouth Fury without having a clue that the car, named Christine, is possessed by a jealous and deadly entity. When John Carpenter took the wheel for the 1983 film adaptation, he streamlined the story to have it focus more on visuals and less on the novel’s themes of toxic masculinity and adolescent rage.

King Never Warmed Up To Christine

Keith Gordon plays Arnie with chilling precision, and the car’s self-repair scenes are also iconic. But the emotional core of the book lies in the tragedy of Arnie’s unraveling, and King acknowledged that it was mostly left in the rearview. While promoting Dreamcatcher in 2003, he lumped Christine and The Shining together as the two film adaptations of his work that had “bored” him, saying:

“I’m thinking chiefly of Christine and Stanley Kubrick’s take on The Shining—should have been good but just… well, they just aren’t. They’re actually sort of boring. Speaking for myself, I’d rather have bad than boring”

3

‘Graveyard Shift’ (1990)

Based on a short story from Night Shift, Graveyard Shift is a claustrophobic horror set in a textile mill that’s crawling with rats and something far worse. The story is simple: a drifter named Hall takes a job at the mill and discovers that the basement hides a monstrous rat-bat hybrid that’s been feasting on workers. The movie navigates the creature-feature territory. It is campy, sweaty, loud, and full of over-the-top performances.

A Forgettable Mess

While director Ralph S. Singleton did try to mix blue-collar horror with the grimy weirdness, Stephen King was not impressed. He felt the filmmakers didn’t even try to elevate the material, and critics agreed because the movie holds a rare 0% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. When Deadline asked what his least favorite adaptation was, he said,

“Should I even say that? I guess there are a number of pictures that I feel like, a little bit like, yuck. There’s one, ‘Graveyard Shift,’ that was made in the eighties. Just kind of a quick exploitation picture.”

2

‘The Lawnmower Man’ (1992)

King’s original short story The Lawnmower Man, is one of his weirdest. It’s about a satyr who mows lawns naked and sacrifices homeowners to the god Pan. The 1192 movie, however, has nothing to do with it. Directed by Brett Leonard, the movie follows Jobe, a mentally disabled gardener who becomes a genius through virtual reality experiments conducted by Dr. Angelo, and he eventually tries to upload himself into cyberspace.

Virtual Reality Meets Legal Reality

The source material is bizarre, brief, and unmistakably King. The adaptation is a sci-fi thriller with cyberpunk vibes. It was originally called Cyber God, and King’s name was slapped on it for marketing. He hated The Lawnmower Man so much that he sued New Line Cinema. And won. It was because the movie bore no resemblance to his story, and a federal judge agreed, but New Line kept using his name on VHS releases, which led to contempt of court charges, and King was awarded $2.5 million in settlement.

1

‘The Shining’ (1980)

Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 adaptation of Stephen King’s deeply personal novel is considered a masterpiece now, but it took a very different route. In the book, Jack Torrance isn’t a villain; he’s a tragic figure trying to stay afloat. And the Overlook Hotel is a malevolent force, but the real horror is watching a family fall apart. Jack Nicholson’s Jack is unhinged from the start, and Shelly Duvall’s Wendy is passive and hysterical.

Beautiful Horror, But Not King’s

King has been famously critical of Kubrick’s interpretation of his work and how it’s cold, cerebral, and visually stunning, but it’s not King’s story. In an interview with Far Out Magazine, he called it “a beautiful Cadillac with no engine inside” and said it had “no heart.” He hated Nicholson’s portrayal and claimed that Jack looked “crazy as a s***house rat” from the first scene.” He also criticized Kubrick’s treatment of Wendy, calling her “one of the most misogynistic characters ever put on film.” King’s dislike of The Shining isn’t about artistic differences, but about losing the very soul of a story that meant everything to him.