Like every week since I started this column last August, there are a number of Stephen King-related stories to highlight for a King Beat news roundup, but I first want to address a terrific loss in the Stephen King fan community. It was reported last Friday that Scott Wampler, co-host of the podcast The Kingcast, had passed away. In addition to knowing him as passionate Constant Reader, I had the pleasure of knowing him as a smart and exceptionally funny colleague as an entertainment reporter. Anyone who met him will never forget him – and if you’re a King fan who is not a Kingcast listener, you are doing yourself an extreme disservice.
Every episode of the show is available to listen to on Fangoria, and you can read on for a cool update about The End Of The World As We Know It: Tales Of Stephen King's The Stand, new movie recommendations from Stephen King, and a 10th anniversary look-back at the book that ushered in the contemporary era of King novels.
The New Anthology Set In The World Of The Stand Features Multiple Stories Set Outside The United States
The scope of Stephen King’s The Stand is absolutely massive, tracking characters from Texas, New York, Maine, Arkansas and more across the country to new homes in Nebraska, Colorado, and Nevada… but like the majority of King fiction, the principal narrative doesn’t expand beyond the borders of the United States. The virus known as Captain Trips is described in the novel as the instigator of a global pandemic, but the book doesn’t provide insight to what’s going on in the rest of the world.
That will change with the release of the upcoming tome The End Of The World As We Know It: Tales Of Stephen King's The Stand.
As I noted a few weeks ago in an edition of The King Beat, editors Brian Keene and Christopher Golden have completed work on the collection of short stories set in the world of Stephen King’s The Stand, and now that it’s done, it’s in the hands of The King of Horror himself. King has been reading the book in recent days – as indicated via social media posts – and it’s via his public discussion of the omnibus that we now know that entries will feature settings outside of North America.
The Losers’ Club Podcast replied to a Stephen King message on Monday asking if there are any stories in The End Of The World As We Know It that “take place overseas,” and while his first reaction was “Not so far,” he provided an update on Wednesday revealing that a contribution from Tim Lebbon is set in space:
There's an excellent one by Tim Lebbon that takes place in space. https://t.co/bjITkIWslpJune 5, 2024
Tim Lebbon isn’t the first writer to tackle the perspective of astronauts who are in orbit amid apocalyptic events (Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra’s comic Y The Last Man and the TV series The Last Man On Earth spring to mind as other examples), but it will be exciting to see how it’s approached in the world of The Stand.
And that’s not all! Bev Vincent, who also has a story featured in the book, posted his own response to The Losers’ Club’s question and noted that an entry from Usman T. Malik takes place in Pakistan.
That brings the count to two of the entries being set outside of the United States… and we’ll just have to wait and see if King reports on more as he keeps making his way through the book (per Brian Keene’s website, The End Of The World As We Know It is a tome as big as The Stand, and King said he was only a third of the way through it on Monday). Gallery Books is set to publish the collection, but a release date has not yet been announced.
UPDATE: Brian Keene reached out to me via Twitter to confirm that there are "several" stories in The End Of The World As We Know It that take place outside the continental United States. He also teases that a couple "may go even beyond those realms."
Stephen King Shares Love For Both In A Violent Nature And Godzilla Minus One
Need something to read? Stephen King has you covered. Even if you have already finished all of the stories in You Like It Darker, I’m willing to bet that the majority of people reading this column have not read every single one of the author’s dozens upon dozens of books.
Are you looking for something to watch? Stephen King has you covered on that front too. He frequently uses social media to highlight films and shows that he has recently enjoyed, and in the past week, he has recommended both the new slasher film In A Violent Nature and the Academy Award-winning Godzilla Minus One.
In A Violent Nature has been the recipient of a lot of buzz since its theatrical release at the end of last week, and Stephen King joined the chorus singing the film’s praises with a post on Twitter this past Monday. The movie is currently playing in over 1,400 cinemas nationwide, and if you’re an individual who considers yourself a slasher fan, King suggests that you should buy the ticket and take the ride. He wrote,
IN A VIOLENT NATURE: If you need a slasher movie, this one will do the job. It's leisurely, almost languorous, but when the blood flows, it flows in buckets. The killer in his mask looks like the world's most terrifying Minion.
The film is a high-concept slasher – a supernatural killer comes back from the dead slaughtering anyone who comes between him and his stolen locket – and while the idea of a killer that looks like a Minion may sound too silly to be scary, the general reaction seems to disagree. In A Violent Nature is so gnarly that even writer/director Chris Nash doesn’t know precisely why the movie had to go into theaters without an MPA rating.
If you’re wondering if In A Violent Nature is up your alley, you can watch the official trailer below and check out the official website to see where it’s playing in a theater near you:
As for Godzilla Minus One, that movie has earned acclaim from just about everyone who has seen it (scope out the matching 98 percent critics and audiences scores on Rotten Tomatoes), but it has only now officially gotten the stamp of approval from Stephen King. The fact that the blockbuster is now available to stream for Netflix subscribers has people talking about it again in the wake of its Oscar win a few months ago, and King made his thoughts about it known via a two-word Retweet of fellow author Linwood Barclay:
So good. https://t.co/JId5g999dRJune 3, 2024
While the standard version of Godzilla Minus One is now streaming on Netflix, the service will also soon include the Black-And-White version that played in theaters for a limited time earlier this year.
Mr. Mercedes Turned 10 Years Old, The Book Is Remembered For Marking A New Era In The Stephen King Canon
Stephen King will forever be remembered for his contributions to horror literature, but in the last decade, a different genre has risen to prominence in his body of work. He’s still telling stories that thrill and scare, but he also keeps making return trips to the world of detective fiction – most notably telling tales about the wonderful Ohio-based private investigator Holly Gibney. Holly has been on her own in recent years, featured as a principal character in 2018’s The Outsider, the 2020 novella “If It Bleeds” and 2023’s Holly, but her journey began with the Bill Hodges trilogy and specifically 2014’s Mr. Mercedes – which was released 10 years ago this week.
The book wasn’t King’s first novel in the genre, as that would be 2001’s Black House (co-written with the late Peter Straub), but it is his first novel in the genre that keeps both feet firmly planted in reality. It’s more Alfred Hitchcock than Agatha Christie in that it balances perspectives of detective and killer rather than being constructed as a whodunit, but it nonetheless builds suspense as retired police detective Bill Hodges continues his hunt for Mr. Mercedes – a killer who used a stolen Mercedes-Benz to drive through a crowd of innocent people awaiting the start of a job fair.
Holly Gibney becomes a close friend of Bill Hodges’ in Mr. Mercedes, and they become business partners after founding a detective agency in the 2015 sequel Finders Keepers. Their time together ends in 2016’s End Of Watch (I won’t spoil it for those who haven’t read it), and things take a big turn toward the supernatural in the plot – but the canon has since returned to its more grounded roots with 2023’s Holly.
Not only is Mr. Mercedes a great book that denotes the start of a new era in Stephen King’s work, but it also inspired one of the best King TV adaptations of all time. The Audience series Mr. Mercedes, starring Brendan Gleeson, Justine Lupe and Harry Treadaway, ran for three seasons and adapted all three books in the Bill Hodges Trilogy (albeit not in order). You can watch every episode with a Peacock subscription and join fans in hoping that producer Jack Bender can find a home for his Holly series and resurrect the canon.
Recommendation Of The Week: “Danny Coughlin’s Bad Dream”
Barring unforeseen circumstances, you can expect me to be using this “Recommendation Of The Week” space to highlight stories from You Like It Darker for at least the next month. In my last three columns, I’ve suggested checking out “Laurie,” “Two Talented Bastids,” and “The Dreamers,” and this week I wish to laud “Danny Coughlin’s Bad Dream.”
Linking back to my comments about Mr. Mercedes, the novella is a crime story that happens to hinge on a supernatural event. The eponymous Danny Coughlin is a mild mannered high school custodian living in Kansas who is haunted by a psychic nightmare that leads him to the location of a murdered young woman. He feels obligated to tell the police about the body, but doing so also makes him the number one suspect, and all he has to defend himself is the incredible truth.
This edition of The King Beat is done, but I’ll be back with a new column next Thursday here on CinemaBlend. Meanwhile you can read about all of the Stephen King adaptations that are presently in the works (and there are a whole lot of them) with our Upcoming Stephen King Movies and TV guide.
