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76 postsStephen King is an American author born in Portland, Maine 1947. He has written over 50 horror, thriller, fantasy and science fiction books, and over 200 short stories. Many of his books have been adapted to film and TV. He is married and has three children.
King reads fans some of the Under the Dome Season 2 premiere script. The new season will include two character deaths, and the introduction of several new actors and characters. The show returns June 30th on CBS.
King announces his second novel of 2014 Revival on his website. Revival, set to release in November, revolves around faith and addiction in the mid-20th century. King’s description of Revival:
In a small New England town, over half a century ago, a shadow falls over a small boy playing with his toy soldiers. Jamie Morton looks up to see a striking man, the new minister. Charles Jacobs, along with his beautiful wife, will transform the local church. The men and boys are all a bit in love with Mrs. Jacobs; the women and girls feel the same about Reverend Jacobs — including Jamie’s mother and beloved sister, Claire. With Jamie, the Reverend shares a deeper bond based on a secret obsession. When tragedy strikes the Jacobs family, this charismatic preacher curses God, mocks all religious belief, and is banished from the shocked town. Jamie has demons of his own. Wed to his guitar from the age of 13, he plays in bands across the country, living the nomadic lifestyle of bar-band rock and roll while fleeing from his family’s horrific loss. In his mid-thirties — addicted to heroin, stranded, desperate — Jamie meets Charles Jacobs again, with profound consequences for both men. Their bond becomes a pact beyond even the Devil’s devising, and Jamie discovers that revival has many meanings.
King releases a highly-anticipated sequel to The Shining following Dan Torrance as a grown adult being haunted by the beings of the Overlook Hotel from the hellish childhood year he had spent there with his family. Doctor Sleep also follows a group of traveling gypsies that feed off of the steam released by people who have the Shining as they are slowly tortured to death. While traveling on a promotional tour, King asked his fans for advice about two potential projects he would be interested in working on.
I mentioned two potential projects while I was on the road, one […] a sequel to The Shining called Doctor Sleep. Are you interested in reading either of these? If so, which one turns your dials more? [We] will be counting your votes (and of course it all means nothing if the muse doesn’t speak).
Stephen Spielberg and King team up to produce a television series based on King’s story, Under the Dome. Premiering in the summer of 2013, the first season releases thirteen episodes on CBS starring Mike Vogel and Rachelle Lefevre as survivors of the mysterious Chester Mill dome. King told CBS that he really likes working with other writers as a collaborative effort to make something as great as Under the Dome. He likes building the mystery and revealing clues a little at a time.
I think people like to watch something like Under the Dome and imagine how they would react.
Pierce Brosnan stars in the A&E Network special four hour mini series of King’s Bag of Bones. Directed by Mick Garris, the film premieres as two separate episodes of two hours long. 3.37 million viewers tune in to watch Brosnan portray a grieving novelist who secludes himself in a lake house after the death of his wife. Durring filming, Garris made sure that he and King stayed in constant contact because Garris wanted to make sure that he portrayed the writer’s work precisely.
I sent him dailies regularly and we did talk, but he’s pretty much a guy who likes to let you do what you’ll do. He learned, a long time ago, of the frustrations of attaching yourself emotionally to a film made from your book that may not turn out well. He’s been able to successfully maintain a balance between the books staying what they are and the movies being what they are, whether he’s involved or not.
King publishes the novel 11/22/63 about a time traveler who attempts to prevent the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The novel required a deep amount of research to accurately portray the early 1960’s.
I’ve never tried to write anything like this before. It was really strange at first, like breaking in new shoes.
On a seemingly normal day, the small town of Chester’s Mill, Maine is encased in an indestructible dome that completely separates them from the rest of the world. King had originally gotten the idea for Under the Dome in the 1970’s, but scrapped the idea several times. After finally publishing the novel, he stated that a good idea never leaves your mind.
I thought to myself what an image that would make, the idea of the whole world watching these people who are as out of touch as people who are stranded on a desert island. They were all fun to write about, I love this book and I love the people in it.
Based off the short story in King’s compilation, Skeleton Crew, The Mist is adapted into film by director Frank Darabont. Starring Thomas Jane, the film is made on am $18 million budget and grosses $57.3 million in the box office. Darabont took a risk by rewritting the screenplay’s ending to tear away from King’s original vision. To his surprise, King praised the ending, describing it as one that would be unsettling in studios.
The ending is such a jolt—wham! It’s frightening. The story is less about the monsters outside than about the monsters inside, the people you’re stuck with, your friends and neighbors breaking under the strain.
Mikael Håfström adapts the King short story, 1408, into a feature film starring John Cusack as a horror novelist who made his career by investigating potentially haunted houses. Via an annonymous tip, Cusack spends a night at New York City’s Dolphin Hotel in the infamous Room 1408, although he is strongly advised against it by the motels manager, played by Samuel L. Jackson. The film grossed $132 million after being produced on a budget of $25 million. Like many of the film adaptations of his work, King was less than thrilled about the Swedish directors work.
[To adapt my work into film] you have to concentrate on character – and throw out the notion that you need a lot of blood spurting and eyeballs flying. That’s not what fear is about.
Based on a short story originally published in King’s compilation, Four Past Midnight, The Secret Window (originally titled Secret Window, Secret Garden) is a tale of a writer who is wrongfully accused of stealing another author’s work and attempts to prove his innocents after all the evidence and people with an alibi being to disappear. Directed by David Koepp, the psychological thriller stars Johnny Depp as the young, misunderstood writer.
King publishes a collection of 14 short stories with Scribner publishing called Everything’s Eventual. One of the tales is The Little Sisters of Eluria, an adventure of Roland pre-The Dark Tower series.
King and Straub team up again to release numerous novels that tie into the Dark Tower series. As a sequel to the Talisman, King publishes Black House about a series of murders that plague the town of French Landing, Wisconsin and Jack Sawyer has to reschedule an early retirement to stop the killer.
Directed by Frank Darabont and starring Tom Hanks and David Morse, King’s mythical prison drama is adapted into a major motion picture. The film grosses $209.7 million after being made on a $60 million budget. Upon seeing the movie, King reportedly repeatedly whispered to his wife,
This is a good movie!
King and his wife Tabitha King give an interview to Katie Couric on the Today Show just five months after King is hit by a truck and seriously injured.
King originally published The Green Mile as six shorter novellas. The tale of a former prison guard at a state penitentiary in 1932 who encounters a peculiar inmate, John Coffey, is categorized as magic realism after prison guard Paul Edgecombe begins to doubt that the kind-hearted Coffey actually committed his crimes.
There’s a feeling in the Green Mile that the human spirit is alive and well even under the most difficult of circumstances. I’ve heard sometimes the more difficult life becomes, the more the human spirit has a chance to shine, and I can’t think of a place where life is more difficult than on death row.
King’s short story Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption is adapted by Frank Darabont into The Shawshank Redemption, a feature film starring Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman as two inmates involved in a money laundering plot in Shawshank State Prison. The film makes $28.3 million in the box office after being produced on a $25 million budget. The film currently holds the #1 spot in IMDb’s “Top 250” best films list. Darabont has adapted many of King’s works into film and says he’s always been attracted to his work as a writer.
What attracts me to his work? He’s one hell of a story spinner. He spins yarns in a very old-school way that tend to be very involving, very rich in character. […] Stephen is a very old-fashioned storyteller, in the best sense of being old-fashioned. Aside from character and absorbing narrative, he has one hell of a knack for suspense, as he’s proven time and again.
Mick Garris directs the made for television film adaptation of King’s The Stand, which premieres on ABC network. Starring Gary Sinise, Rob Lowe and Molly Ringwald, the 366 minute, four part film follows a group of post-apocalyptic survivors as they begin to reform a society after the world population is wiped out by a militarized version of the plague. When King heard that The Stand was being made into a film, he was less than enthusiastic about it and unsure if it would work.
I didn’t know anything about this until I read about it on the Internet. You absolutely can’t make it as a two-hour movie. If it was a trilogy of films…maybe. People who’ve seen Kubrick’s The Shining dislike the miniseries I wrote (and my amigo Mick Garris directed) even if they haven’t seen it. That’s always annoyed me. But the wheel of karma turns! This time people will probably say, “The miniseries was lots better.”
Directed by William Goldman, produced by Rob Reiner and starring James Caan and Kathy Bates, King’s Misery is adapted into a major film. The film grosses $61.3 million on a budget of $20 million. King had refused to sell the novel’s adaptation rights because of how other works of his were mishandled in film translations, but eventually let Reiner do Misery after his 1986 adaptation of Stand by Me. In his collection, Stephen King Goes to the Movies, King states that Misery is one of his top ten favorite film adaptations.
After finding something mysterious buried in her back yard, Bobbi Anderson becomes obsessed with digging it up and discovering what it is. Soon, the town’s population becomes increasingly ill due to the appearance of the aliens known as the Tommyknockers.
After becoming discouraged with his progress, King parted with the manuscript, only to come back to it decades later.
That was another case of a book I tried to write a long time ago. I had the idea of the guy stumbling over the flying saucer when I was a senior in college. I had 15 or 20 pages and I just stopped. I don’t remember why.
After being saved from a car accident, novelist Paul Sheldon is taken in and nursed by his number one fan, Annie Wilkes. Under her care, he finishes the final novel in Wilke’s favorite series, starring a character named Misery. Wilkes becomes infuriated by Sheldon’s surprise death of Misery and keeps him captive until he writes another novel bringing Misery to life. King says the inspiration for Misery came from poor fan reception of his books that weren’t horror/thriller focused. It also came from King’s struggle to give up drugs and alcohol.
Take the psychotic nurse in Misery, which I wrote when I was having such a tough time with dope. I knew what I was writing about. There was never any question. Annie was my drug problem, and she was my number-one fan. God, she never wanted to leave.
