This past week, you may have caught the first reviews of Pet Sematary: Bloodlines out of Fantastic Fest 2023, and you may have seen a special reaction to the new thriller No One Will Save You, but that’s not all that’s been going on in the world of Stephen King. There is also a new adaptation in the early stages of development and a special anniversary to celebrate – and I’ve got all that covered and more in this fresh edition of The King Beat.
What has The Boogeyman director Rob Savage been up to, what is the legacy of Doctor Sleep a decade into its existence, and how does the recently released Holly stack up with King’s other Holly Gibney stories? Let’s dig in!
The Boogeyman’s Rob Savage Has Been Discussing Making Another Stephen King Adaptation With David Dastmalchian
Looking at the history of Stephen King adaptations, it’s wonderful to see the impressive number of filmmakers who have dedicated their talents to bringing multiple stories to life on screen. Mick Garris is the most prolific in this field, having made The Stand, The Shining, Quicksilver Highway, Riding The Bullet, Desperation, and Bag Of Bones (not to mention Sleepwalkers, which is based on an original screenplay by King), but there’s also George A. Romero (Creepshow, The Dark Half), Rob Reiner (Stand By Me, Misery), Mike Flanagan (Gerald’s Game, Doctor Sleep), Frank Darabont (The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile, The Mist), and more. It’s a very special club – and it’s one that director Rob Savage wants to join.
Savage took his first step into the world of Stephen King movies this summer with the making of The Boogeyman (based on the short story of the same name from Night Shift), and he’s already excited about the possibility of working on another adaptation. I spoke with the filmmaker earlier this month in advance of his movie’s upcoming Blu-ray debut, and he explained that he now has a whole new way of looking at King stories, and that he’s been talking with actor David Dastmalchian about another collaboration:
I've been flicking back through especially the short story collections and bookmarking a few of them. It's nice being in the Stephen King Club as well, because you get other people coming to you and saying like, 'Oh, well, have you ever thought about “Graveyard Shift”? Have you ever thought about this?' David Dastmalchian, who plays Lester in in the film, is a big Stephen King fan as well, so we've been kind of we've been chatting about a couple of other short stories that would make great features.
There’s certainly no shortage of terrifying tales for Rob Savage to consider, and that’s even truer if he’s open to working with material that has already been adapted. The cited “Graveyard Shift,” for example, was previously made into a film by director Ralph S. Singleton in 1990. That movie also happens to be pretty terrible, however, and it’s a Stephen King story that could use a remake. There exists plenty of cinematic potential in a bunch of roughnecks encountering a rat monster in the wet and dingy bowels of an old mill.
All that being said, if Savage could choose any of King’s stories to make into a movie next, he has a specific title in mind. This past summer, he let the world know that he very much wants to tackle a new version of “The Langoliers,” and flipping through other omnibuses looking at other possibilities has not dulled that passion. He reiterated his desire to adapt the novella in our recent conversation, saying:
Oh, ‘Langoliers’ is still... in every interview I can, I'm putting that out to the universe that I would love to make that happen if we can figure out the legalities… There's so much fertile ground in that idea of playing with time and the decay of time. There's a cosmically terrifying notion there that you could do so much with that's nothing like any other horror movie I can think of. And that lends itself so well to cinema as well, because cinema is all about manipulation of time. I think there's so much fun you could have there.
First published in the collection Four Past Midnight, “The Langoliers” centers on a small group of passengers aboard a commercial flight who find themselves in a terrifying mystery when their plane accidentally travels through a rip in time. Director Tom Holland, another member of the Multiple Stephen King Adaptations Club, made a small screen version of the story in 1995 prior to the making of the film Thinner – and while it’s a faithful miniseries, it’s also aged terribly due to its awful visual effects.
Rob Savage’s musings on the novella make it sound like he has an exciting vision for the material, and following the success of The Boogeyman, I’m hoping he gets the chance to execute it.
Doctor Sleep Celebrates Its 10 Year Anniversary With A Strange Legacy
Stephen King regularly fields questions about his work from fans and members of the press, but in the late 1990s, one query proposed to him made him really stop and think: whatever happened to Danny Torrance a.k.a. the kid from The Shining? This, as explained in the Author’s Note section of the book, was the big key that led King to write Doctor Sleep – which first arrived in stores 10 years ago this week on September 24, 2013.
In reflection on its decade in existence, the novel has a strange legacy, and it’s specifically because of Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. The 1980 film is widely considered one of the best horror movies of all time, but King has never been shy about sharing his distaste for the changes the adaptation makes from his source material, and a standout result of that distaste is a flavor of spite that he writes into Doctor Sleep. It’s a terrific story with tremendous characters, powerful horror, and a beautiful theme of recovery to balance The Shining’s story of addiction – but it’s also pointedly King’s sequel to his own book instead of a follow-up to Kubrick’s creation (with Dick Halloran still alive at the start and The Overlook Hotel still destroyed).
Sanding the edges of this pop culture conflict, however, is Mike Flanagan’s brilliant adaptation of Doctor Sleep. It drops the spite qualities of King’s work so that it operates as a sequel to Kubrick’s movie, but more importantly, it also incorporates elements of The Shining novel that Kubrick skipped over. While the book arguably fanned the flames of discord, the adaptation made an effort to forge peace, and it seems that it has, as Flanagan told The Kingcast in 2021 that the author has now “softened” his views on The Shining. A decade ago, that seemed impossible.
Spoiler Mini-Review: Holly Is A Wonderful Return To Non-Supernatural Horror For Stephen King’s Favorite Detective
(SPOILER WARNING: Now that Holly has been out for three weeks, I want to dive into thoughts about the new novel – but if you haven’t read the book yet, proceed at your own risk!)
There are few storytellers in history who are better adept at telling supernatural stories than Stephen King, but when the author set about writing what would become his Bill Hodges trilogy, he opted to take a step away from the fantastical. Arriving in the wake of novels Under The Dome (aliens), 11.22.63 (time travel), The Dark Tower: The Wind Through The Keyhole (magic), Joyland (ghosts), and Doctor Sleep (psychic powers), Mr. Mercedes was King taking a crack at writing straight detective fiction – centering on a retired police officer on the hunt for a mass murderer/serial killer named Brady Hartsfield.
That book, which introduced Constant Readers to the lovely, odd Holly Gibney, was followed by Finders Keepers, which plays in the same grounded ballpark… but the series hasn’t been the same since End Of Watch, which features Brady Hartsfield gaining the ability to inhabit the bodies of others via technological hypnosis. King seemingly couldn’t resist the urge to have Bill and Holly grapple with the supernatural, and he’s continued to have the latter face off against legit monsters in The Outsider and “If It Bleeds.” These are all great stories, but Holly, King’s latest book, is a welcomed return to the original concept for the continuity.
The novel is very much the author having his cake and eating it too. The villains this time around are Emily and Rodney Harris, a pair of elderly professors who kidnap and eat people because they believe that cannibalism is the key to extended life and health. Stephen King writes their story in a way that makes you wonder if they actually know something that others don’t – a vibe supported by Holly’s previous paranormal experiences – but it’s ultimately satisfying to see the detective protagonist drive at the truth and expose the Harrises as traditional violent psychotics.
Holly is another taut, tense mystery from King that doesn’t need a whodunit plot to deliver intrigue, and it’s another brilliant step in the journey of Holly Gibney – who has transformed in spectacular ways since her Mr. Mercedes introduction as a cripplingly shy young woman who is dominated by her anxiety and overbearing mother. Her evolution has been phenomenal to witness as a reader, and hopefully she has many more adventures battling monsters (both literal and figurative) in the years ahead.
Recommendation Of The Week: “Word Processor Of The Gods”
This week’s Stephen King short story recommendation is brought to you by Rob Savage’s hunt for a second King adaptation to make. I considered just being basic and recommending “The Langoliers,” which is amazing for all of the reasons that Savage mentions and more – but I instead opted to challenge myself and find a different title that would reflect the filmmaker’s pre-Boogeyman filmography. With his prior experience making screenlife movies (namely Host and Dashcam), my brain sprung to “Word Processor Of The Gods.”
First published in a 1983 issue of Playboy before being included in the 1985 collection Skeleton Crew, the short story centers on a middle-aged man named Richard Hagstrom who is trapped in an awful life with a demanding wife and disrespectful son. He’s only made more miserable when his lovely nephew Jonathan (the son of his wretched brother) dies in a car accident – but things start to magically change when he begins using a homemade word processor that Jonathan has built as a birthday gift. Richard realizes that whatever he types becomes reality, and he uses this incredible power to rewrite his whole world.
“Word Processor Of The Gods” is a spooky story, but one that notably doesn’t come packaged with the kind of Faustian twist that you would expect; it’s practically a modern fairy tale. It unfolds unexpectedly and without the darkness you’d expect from King. If Rob Savage were to turn it into a movie, though, I’d imagine the best course of action would be to not only modernize it, but also hit the horror gas pedal by introducing some terrible consequences for Richard’s actions (which would also make it stand out from the adaptation made as an episode of 1984’s Tales From The Darkside).
That wraps up this week’s edition of The King Beat, but I’ll be back next Thursday with another news roundup, and you can explore my Adapting Stephen King column in the meantime for a full exploration of King’s work in film and television.
