Stephen King enjoyed an incredible year in 2025, with one new novel, four new movie adaptations, and two television series based on his work. It was also an impressive year, since all the Stephen King movies received positive reviews on average, with three of them certified fresh and the fourth still receiving a 63% Rotten Tomatoes rating.
What is most impressive is that all but two of the six releases between movies and TV ended up remaining very loyal to Stephen King’s source material. The only two that veered away from the source were The Running Man, which changed the ending, and The Monkey, which was meant to be a fun horror movie and succeeded.
The Monkey
The first Stephen King adaptation to arrive in 2025 was The Monkey. Based on the short story from the Skeleton Crew collection, the movie follows twins Hal and Bill, who own their father’s old wind-up monkey that has a history of causing terrible and bloody deaths, including that of their mother when they were younger.
The most significant change in The Monkey is from the start, as the twins (both played by Theo James) are not part of the short story. Director Osgood Perkins also decides not to care too much about the horror that King wrote into his story, and instead decides it is a movie about a killer monkey toy, so he goes for the absurd.
Out of the four Stephen King movies of 2025, The Monkey is the only one that is a full-out horror comedy. However, the deaths are never played as a joke, and every single death the monkey might be causing is shot as plausible accidents, adding a little bit of doubt to the supernatural aspects of the story.
However, it takes someone else in the film to activate the toy, whereas King’s story has it activate itself when needed. The movie also ends differently, with one of the twins planning to kill the other, while King’s short story is simply about destroying the monkey once and for all, which isn’t what happened in the film.
That said, the one thing that The Monkey does remain loyal to is the idea that everyone is going to die and that death is inevitable, a similar theme as in the comparable Final Destination movies.
Welcome to Derry
What is most interesting about the HBO Max series, Welcome to Derry, is that it is not based on a King story, but was instead inspired by his novel, IT, and serves as a prequel to that story and the movies based on it. In fact, Bill Skarsgård returns as Pennywise after portraying the character in Andy Muschietti’s 2017 and 2019 movies.
So, if Welcome to Derry isn’t based on an actual King story, how can it be considered faithful to the source material? It is canon to the movies, and it expands on the story from there. While it isn’t canon to the Stephen King books, the two Muschietti movies were very faithful, so the series keeps that intact.
However, even more important is the fact that Welcome to Derry is faithful to the Stephen King novel’s tone and the ideas of Derry’s dark history. It also connects to other King stories, including bringing in characters from The Shining, and it adds to the mythos without contradicting much that King had already set up.
The Running Man
The Running Man is the second time that Hollywood has tried to adapt the Stephen King novel of the same name, written under the pseudonym Richard Bachman. The first movie from 1987 starred Arnold Schwarzenegger and had almost nothing in common with the book other than the title and the idea of a life-or-death reality TV game.
That is the most impressive aspect of King’s story, as it was initially written in 1973 before King published it under his Bachman pseudonym in 1982. King predicted the reality TV craze decades earlier than it happened, and the life-or-death fiction that would become popular decades later as well.
The 2025 version of The Running Man is a million times more faithful than the 1987 movie. However, there are some considerable differences that director Edgar Wright made to ensure the film worked in 2025. The setup is the same in both, with Ben agreeing to be in the reality TV series to get his daughter medical treatment.
However, Wright changes everything about The Running Man ending. In King’s novel, Ben’s family is killed, and Ben, mortally wounded, flies the plane into the television studio, killing everyone there in a self-sacrifice. The movie gave Ben a heroic ending, didn’t kill his family, and had him leading a rebellion. It changed everything about the end sacrifice.
The Institute
The Institute is a Stephen King adaptation that slipped by many people’s radars thanks to the fact that it was an MGM+ series, and it was only available on that streaming service. The first season had eight episodes, and it was renewed for a second season. It was also a newer King story, based on the novel from 2019.
The story felt a lot like Firestarter and Stranger Things, as it focuses on an institute that basically kidnaps kids with powers and holds them there to experiment on them. In the book, it follows a child whose parents were murdered, and he is taken in the middle of the night, which is how it seems most kids end up there.
The Institute remains mainly faithful to the novel, with the idea of kids with powers working together against evil people in a bad place. There were some minor changes to improve the story, such as making the lead character Joe a little bit older, so the torture scenes were a little easier to take on a streaming series.
King himself has said that the series mainly stayed loyal to his original novel, and he went on to say that any changes made were for the better when considering the changing format from the written word to the small screen.
The Life of Chuck
The Life of Chuck joins movies like Stand By Me, The Shawshank Redemption, and The Green Mile as films that non-Stephen King fans might be surprised the King of Horror wrote. There is little in the way of horror to this tale, although there is a bit of sci-fi in this very sad, yet uplifting drama movie.
The best thing about Mike Flagan’s adaptation is that he very closely follows Stephen King’s novel, and it remains one of the most faithful adaptations of the author’s work. There were several things added to the story since this was a short novella, and the movie is feature-length, but little was changed.
Just like the novella, The Life of Chuck is told in reverse order, with Act 3 first, followed by Act 2, and then Act 1 at the end. The universe’s collapse is in both, as is Chuck’s fateful dance. There are also entire conversations from King’s novella that are played out almost word-for-word in the film, which makes it very familiar for readers.
There was one significant change, though, and it wasn’t changing anything from the original story. Instead, Flanagan’s movie added much more importance to the hospital where Felicia works. It is what happens at this hospital that ties Chuck’s life to the fate of the universe. It also makes Felicia more important in Act 3 than she was in the novella.
The Long Walk
The best movie to hit theaters in 2025 based on Stephen King’s work is The Long Walk. This was another Richard Bachman story, and one that several filmmakers have wanted to make over the years, but could never get it to work. It finally happened in 2025, with director Francis Lawrence (The Hunger Games) and writer JT Mollner (Strange Darling).
The movie and the novel tell the same story. A totalitarian regime has set up a competition after a destructive civil war destroyed the country. A teenage boy from each state is chosen randomly and forced to compete in a long walk across the country. Anyone who slows below 3 mph is given a warning and then executed by the military after three warnings.
The winner is the last teenager left alive at the end. Interestingly, The Long Walk was the first book that Stephen King ever wrote when he was 19, although he didn’t publish it until many years later under his Richard Bachman pseudonym. It was clear he wrote it as an angry young man, and many of the themes are still relevant today.
What makes The Long Walk such a great movie is that it remains remarkably faithful to Stephen King’s story, and the changes it makes actually improve the story. The script itself keeps the brats from King’s story almost exactly intact. Roy Garraty (Cooper Hoffman) is the lead in the book and the movie, so that remains the same.
As for the changes, The Long Walk has the bonds that Roy makes with other walkers more pronounced and mean more, so their deaths hit harder when they happen. Pete (David Jonsson) is also more important in the movie, which helps his relationship with Roy. However, the most significant change is the ending.
The Long Walk has a very different conclusion that is so much better than the novel. The winner of the competition is someone different, and instead of the hopeless ending of the book, there is a bit of revenge, and it is much more satisfying. It helps make The Long Walk the best Stephen King movie of 2025, and the most faithful.
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