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Steven King Movies

ICWestfan

ICWestfan

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May 26, 2005
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I love the authors books, but for what ever reason they don't cross over to the big screen. Poor screen writing, producing, directing, pick your poison. But as a fan of King novels, whenever a movie of his comes on I get sucked in no matter how bad it is.

And now, we get this. A movie based on a book I enjoyed the most...

Firestarter
 
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ICWestfan said:
I love the authors books, but for what ever reason they don't cross over to the big screen. Poor screen writing, producing, directing, pick your poison. But as a fan of King novels, whenever a movie of his comes on I get sucked in no matter how bad it is.

And now, we get this. A movie based on a book I enjoyed the most...

Firestarter
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You dont like Shawshank Redemption?
 
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I'm talking the books. Firestarter may be my all time fav book by King.

As far as Shawshank goes, the book and the movie actually mirror each other.
 
83Hawk said:
The Shining, Shawshank Redemption, Carrie, Misery, and Stand By Me were all good King films.
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I think the Shining is debatable. Kind of overrated imo. The rest are good films, but I think it’s pretty much undisputed that Kings stories overwhelmingly do not translate well to the screen.
 
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SolarHawk said:
I think the Shining is debatable. Kind of overrated imo. The rest are good films, but I think it’s pretty much undisputed that Kings stories overwhelmingly do not translate well to the screen.
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That’s too bad because Christine was one of his best books. Should have been a great movie. It was just onay.

I also liked the Apt Pupil short.
 
ICWestfan said:
I love the authors books, but for what ever reason they don't cross over to the big screen. Poor screen writing, producing, directing, pick your poison. But as a fan of King novels, whenever a movie of his comes on I get sucked in no matter how bad it is.

And now, we get this. A movie based on a book I enjoyed the most...

Firestarter
Click to expand...
Didn't you like the '84 Drew Barrymore version? I'm not sure this one with the chick from American Horror Story will be any better, other than the fire special effects.
 
ICWestfan said:
I love the authors books, but for what ever reason they don't cross over to the big screen. Poor screen writing, producing, directing, pick your poison. But as a fan of King novels, whenever a movie of his comes on I get sucked in no matter how bad it is.

And now, we get this. A movie based on a book I enjoyed the most...

Firestarter
Click to expand...

You do realize this isn’t the first Firestarter movie, right?
 
Just a plug for a good dude,

Stephen King came to FSU to give a talk in the early 2000’s and ended up staying for hours signing things for like 1500 people.

Also, his book on writing is fantastic.
 
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ICWestfan said:
That's my point. The first one with Drew Barrymoore was ......meh. I hope this one is better and now I have to go see it.
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I thought this one was also meh unfortunately. I’ve never read the book, but I had the distinct sense they were trying too hard to be faithful to it.
 
Clearly you've never seen Maximum Overdrive!

Yes, it's not Shawshank Redemption, Green Mike, etc, but that movie is a blast!

91rVlf-+5FL._SY679_.jpg
 
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Wasn’t a book by King, but Creepshow was solid. I believe it was his screenwriting debut.
 
Some have been pulled off, others not so much. I think perhaps one difficulty is King does a LOT of exposition and his character building as their internal character dialogue(their thoughts). Which is great, no one does it better, but is difficult to sometimes translate in film because they have to convey that character back story and inner workings externally and with back story. With he being such a good character builder, not surprising some of the best adaptations are with good actors.

My favorite movie probably is the original Pet Cemetery. Pretty faithful to book and really good.
The worst to me is the inexplicably bad Black Tower. His Magnus opus was built to either be a series of movies or a HBO series abs they made a terrible 95 minute film trying to combine a bunch of the books. Just bizarre.
 
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Not a movie but my favorite King appearance was on Sons of Anarchy.

Sons need to make a body disappear so they hire a fixer (King) to chemically dissolve the body.

Funny ending...they are a little short on cash so in addition to the cash they have they offer anything in the house he wants. He quietly selects a small Statue which happened to be the murder weapon....so that disappeared too.
 
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I worked for an entertainment company that produced several of his books to film or TV, I didn’t think any were great but nothing we did really was. I rode up in the elevator with him and chatted, nice guy but definitely a little different.
 
noleclone2 said:
Some have been pulled off, others not so much. I think perhaps one difficulty is King does a LOT of exposition and his character building as their internal character dialogue(their thoughts). Which is great, no one does it better, but is difficult to sometimes translate in film because they have to convey that character back story and inner workings externally and with back story. With he being such a good character builder, not surprising some of the best adaptations are with good actors.

My favorite movie probably is the original Pet Cemetery. Pretty faithful to book and really good.
The worst to me is the inexplicably bad Black Tower. His Magnus opus was built to either be a series of movies or a HBO series abs they made a terrible 95 minute film trying to combine a bunch of the books. Just bizarre.
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Yeah, I've read read all but the latest addition to the Dark Tower series and didn't even consider watching the movie. The trailers just like you said, bizarre. It's really too bad because a direct adaptation of The Gunslinger could have been amazing. It's also sad that it basically shut the door of us ever seeing Of Wizard and Glass as a book faithful movie.

I was also really excited about the casting when it announced. Elba and McConaughey could play those rolls really well.
 
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I always thought Pet Semetary was the movie that best captured the tone of the book it was based on. The Zelda scene was creepy. Needful Things and The Mist didn't do a bad job either.

BubsFinn said:
King’s books translate really well to film. The problem is he doesn’t know how to write a good ending.
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The Mist is a great example of this. The script writer changed the ending(to something truly horrific) and I believe King has said he preferred the film ending.
 
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Jerome Silberman said:
Yeah, I've read read all but the latest addition to the Dark Tower series and didn't even consider watching the movie. The trailers just like you said, bizarre. It's really too bad because a direct adaptation of The Gunslinger could have been amazing. It's also sad that it basically shut the door of us ever seeing Of Wizard and Glass as a book faithful movie.

I was also really excited about the casting when it announced. Elba and McConaughey could play those rolls really well.
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Isn’t there a tv series based on the dark tower series in production somewhere? That could be interesting.

I read the first dark tower book and that cruddy movie, it’s stuff like that that sometimes makes me wonder if the movie writers ever read the source material.
 
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The second iteration of It was fabulous. I just wish they'd do a long miniseries o the entire Dark Tower Canon.

Personally, I think too much of King's writing goes on in people's heads, which is difficult to film.
 
BubsFinn said:
King’s books translate really well to film. The problem is he doesn’t know how to write a good ending.
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I don't agree with the first sentence, but I definitely agree with the second. I've heard that most of his stories are based off of his dreams, and since dreams don't really have an "ending," I've postulated that that is why so many of his stories end in disappointment.

Drake__Mallard said:
Aint that the truth... My favorite book of his is The Stand but the ending is a let down.
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Totally agree here. Two of the best books I ever read were The Stand and It. They were also two of the worst endings of stories I've ever read; totally unworthy.
 
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MeetTheFerentz said:
I don't agree with the first sentence, but I definitely agree with the second. I've heard that most of his stories are based off of his dreams, and since dreams don't really have an "ending," I've postulated that that is why so many of his stories end in disappointment.


Totally agree here. Two of the best books I ever read were The Stand and It. They were also two of the worst endings of stories I've ever read; totally unworthy.
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ITs ending is..... disturbing.
 
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ghost80 said:
Not a movie but my favorite King appearance was on Sons of Anarchy.

Sons need to make a body disappear so they hire a fixer (King) to chemically dissolve the body.

Funny ending...they are a little short on cash so in addition to the cash they have they offer anything in the house he wants. He quietly selects a small Statue which happened to be the murder weapon....so that disappeared too.
Click to expand...

SOA: "Where's the body?"

King: "What body."

Classic.
 
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I saw this Firestarter remake also only had a budget of $12 million. They’re a production company that has done a number of smaller budget flicks well over the years, but that’s a really small budget for a movie now.
 
MeetTheFerentz said:
I don't agree with the first sentence, but I definitely agree with the second. I've heard that most of his stories are based off of his dreams, and since dreams don't really have an "ending," I've postulated that that is why so many of his stories end in disappointment.


Totally agree here. Two of the best books I ever read were The Stand and It. They were also two of the worst endings of stories I've ever read; totally unworthy.
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That's what I was thinking as well.
 
SigMaintHawk said:
Add-The Green Mile-to the list.

A couple of others that weren't to bad...The first Creepshow and Silver Bullet(written as a novella called-Cycle of the Werewolf).
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I forgot about The Green Mile. And Dead Zone wasn’t bad.
 
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