Being media savvy and very active on social media, Stephen King regularly shares his opinions about new films and television shows online – and his tastes don’t always align with the general consensus. An instance of this that immediately springs to mind is his high praise of Dennis Iliadis' 2009 remake of The Last House On The Left in his introduction to the 2010 reprinting of his nonfiction book Danse Macabre, but a much more recent example is his appreciation for the new Netflix limited series Zero Day starring Robert De Niro, Lizzy Caplan, Jesse Plemons, Connie Britton, and Joan Allen.
That story represents just one of the headline’s in this edition of The King Beat, as Stephen King’s latest pop culture critique is joined in this week’s story roundup by an anniversary analysis of Roadwork’s cinematic potential, and a suggestion for a King-approved double feature movie-goers can execute this coming weekend. There’s a lot to discuss, so let’s dig in!
Stephen King Is Digging Zero Day – Particularly The Performance By Dan Stevens
As noted, Zero Day – a Netflix series created by Eric Newman, Noah Oppenheim, and Michael Schmidt – is overflowing with star power, but the talent and the charisma of the big names in the cast haven’t been enough to win over critics. Some publications, including Empire, the Chicago Sun-Times and the Wall Street Journal have shown it some love, but writers for Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, Vulture, USA Today, and Slate have been less impressed. The reaction could be called mixed at best, but Stephen King can be counted among its fans, with the performance by Dan Stevens being singled out as a highlight.
These days, Stephen King has a couple of social media homes, and while he is very active on Bluesky, his take on Zero Day was posted this week on Threads. In addition to his appreciation for Dan Stevens’ turn as an extremely opinionated TV talking head, he also offered serious praise for Lesli Linka Glatter, who directed all six episodes of the streaming series. King wrote,
Watching ZERO DAY (Netflix): It's old school, but it's terrific. Great Tucker Carlson-type character. You could say it's a caricature, but Tucker himself has become a cartoon conservative. First 3 episodes directed by Leslie Linka Glatter, the best director of streaming TV, hands down.
For those who don’t know the name, Lesli Linka Glatter’s career on the small screen dates back to the late 1980s/early 1990s, and her impressive filmography includes outstanding, era-defining shows including Twin Peaks, NYPD Blue, and ER. More recently, she has helmed episodes of Justified, The Leftovers, Homeland, and The Morning Show.
Lacking from Glatter’s resume are any Stephen King adaptations… which perhaps motivated King’s follow-up post on Threads highlighting the talents of Jack Bender, who lists episodes of Under The Dome, Mr. Mercedes, The Outsider and the upcoming MGM+ series The Institute among his credits:
Except maybe for Jack Bender: LOST, MR. MERCEDES, FINDERS KEEPERS, END OF WATCH, LOST, FROM...the forhcoming [sic] THE INSTITUTE...I could go on...
Also featuring the talents of Bill Camp, Matthew Modine, McKinley Belcher III, and Angela along with all of the actors mentioned above, Zero Day arrived on streaming in late February, and all six episodes are currently available to binge exclusively for those with a Netflix subscription.
Following The Running Man And The Long Walk Movies, Will Hollywood Show Some Love To Richard Bachman’s Roadwork?
The work of Richard Bachman suddenly finds itself en vogue in Hollywood. Prior to 2025, the 1996 film Thinner was the last adaptation of a book published under Stephen King’s infamous pseudonym, but Edgar Wright’s The Running Man (which has been promised to hone closer to the source material than the 1987 movie starring Arnold Schwarzenegger) is set to hit theaters in the fall, and Francis Lawrence’s The Long Walk completed production last year and is simply awaiting a release date now.
Should the two features end up being successful, could it result in Constant Readers finally seeing a big screen version of the novel Roadwork?
First published in 1981, the book had its 44th anniversary this week, and consideration of the work has led me to ponder its cinematic potential. Stephen King fans will never see an adaptation of Richard Bachman’s Rage (which is ultimately a good thing), and I don’t personally consider either 1996’s The Regulators or 2007’s Blaze to be among the author’s best works in general, but among the Bachman books that have not yet made their way to film or television, Roadwork could make for fascinating material in the right hands.
Like the majority of the titles published with King’s pseudonym, it’s a book with high levels of anger and cynicism – two emotions that are quite prevalent in today’s society (though the story is set in the early 1970s). Barton George Dawes is a protagonist reminiscent of Michael Douglas' William "D-Fens" Foster from Falling Down: on the edge and ready to burn his world down. In endless grief following the death of his son from terminal brain cancer, he sabotages both his professional life and marriage, and he makes a mission of rebelling against a highway construction project that is set to decimate his neighborhood.
Roadwork is a book of existential rage and the death of Barton George Dawes son is a reflection of Stephen King’s personal loss. In the essay “Why I Was Bachman” (included in the omnibus collection The Bachman Books), he notes that he wrote the story in between Salem’s Lot and The Shining, but it was more importantly a year after the passing of his mother. He writes:
The most recent of the Bachman books offered here, Roadwork… was an effort to write a ‘straight’ novel. (I was also young enough in those days to worry about that casual cocktail-party question, ‘Yes, but when are you going to do something serious?’) I think it was also an effort to make some sense of my mother’s painful death the year before – a lingering cancer had taken her off inch by painful inch. Following this death I was left both grieving and shaken by the apparent senselessness of it all.
He suggests that it’s the “worst of the lot” because it’s “trying to find some answers to the conundrum of human pain,” but he offered a reappraisal in the 1996 essay “The Importance of Being Bachman” and dubs it his “favorite of the early Bachman books.” I won’t personally go that far (I save that superlative for The Long Walk), but it is a fantastic story written with a passionate voice.
There have been efforts to adapt Roadwork – and not too long ago either. In 2019, Andy and Barbara Muschietti (the sibling filmmakers behind IT, IT: Chapter Two, and the upcoming IT: Welcome To Derry series) told Radio Cantilo that an adaptation was in the works with Argentinian director Pablo Trapero, and that there were plans to begin production at the beginning of 2020… but we all know what happened in 2020. Lack of any reporting about the project since then suggests that it lost momentum.
If the respective theatrical releases of The Running Man and The Long Walk suggest a hunger among the movie-going public for the voice of Richard Bachman, Roadwork is perfect in a “next title up” sense. If a talented filmmaker and star could channel the anger and power on the page, it could be something incredible.
Want To Do A Stephen King-Approved Double Feature This Weekend? Check Out The Monkey And The Rule Of Jenny Pen Back-To-Back
If you haven’t yet taken the opportunity to go see Osgood Perkins’ The Monkey, you’re missing out. Between its extreme gore and exceptionally goofy tone, it’s unlike any Stephen King adaptation before, and it’s a scream. You really should make an effort to see it on a big screen with an audience – and if you plan to do so this weekend, allow me to recommend doing a double feature with another Stephen King-approved title: writer/director James Ashcroft’s The Rule Of Jenny Pen.
Starring Geoffrey Rush and John Lithgow, the new release had its world premiere last fall at Fantastic Fest, and it was then that Stephen King first shared his glowing social media review of the film – saying at the time it was “one of the best movies I've seen this year.” It’s a sentiment with which I very much concur (as reflected in my four-and-a-half star CinemaBlend review), and it arrives in limited release this weekend from IFC Films.
The Rule Of Jenny Pen has a much sharper edge to it compared to The Monkey, going for gasps over laughs with its horror, but the two features together also demonstrate the incredible diversity that exists in the genre.
That brings us to the end of this week’s edition of The King Beat, but as always, I’ll be back next Thursday here on CinemaBlend with the latest roundup of all the biggest news out of the world of Stephen King.
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