Stephen King has had his work adapted many times in both movies and television. Unsurprisingly, King has thoughts on the ones that went better than others. Let us hope that the upcoming remake of The Stand falls into the “better” category, as there is a TV adaptation that the author thought went badly. King opened up about which show “went off the rails.”
This is not the first time that Stephen King has had some things to say about this particular TV adaptation. The show in question is, of course, Under the Dome. It premiered on CBS back in 2013, lasting three seasons before it got cancelled. Last year, King made headlines when he called on Netflix to reboot the series. More than a year later, he is providing further insight into why he wants one.
It all has to do with the show lacking a strong dose of reality regarding that titular dome. Yes, the same one that came down in what turned out to be Under the Dome’s last season. It took a lot of episodes to get to that point, though, and Stephen King was not okay with the TV show’s unrealistic portrayal of the aftermath of that dome drop. King told The Washington Post:
Under the Dome [on CBS] was one I felt like went entirely off the rails, because the people are doing things that don’t seem realistic. One thing that killed me was you never hear the sound of a generator anywhere. The electric power is fine. Everything looks clean. Everything is great, except that they’re cut off from the world. And that isn’t what would happen. If you ask people to accept those ideas, there has to be a sense of realism that goes with it, that pulls you along.
Stephen King could not get over the abandoned sense of realism where Under the Dome was concerned. The author indicates that the only struggle the citizens of Chester’s Mill encountered was being cut off from the outside world. Otherwise, they had their needs met, including looking pretty spiffy, according to King. Reality did catch up with the cast while filming. Thanks to a malfunctioning cocoon, one of the show’s stars nearly died.
That said, Stephen King did his best, sending a “tweet” from his typewriter. The show got one season after the iconic author wrote the Season 2 premiere, but the damage may have been done in Season 1. Why a plot point could not have arisen to explain why things got more “real” is another question entirely.
Hopefully, Under the Dome can be remade in a way that can please Stephen King. It has been five years since the show went off the air, which falls within a reboot-friendly time-frame. Regardless of his frustration with CBS’s Under the Dome, he has another property headed to its neighborhood.
The Stand premieres on Thursday, December 17, on CBS All Access. It is one of the many new shows premiering this fall. Until then, you can stream several Stephen King adaptations on Netflix alongside a lot of new 2020 content, and be sure to vote in our Under the Dome poll below!
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