He is one of the writers who has accumulated the most film and television adaptations and the reason is quite obvious: yes, we immediately connect Stephen King with horror, but his works transcend the genre to tell us about human nature.
It is also true that he has a creative production that has drawn him into different registers. There is the more difficult King, who takes us back to our atavistic fears, and the more metaphysical King, who uses tinctures of mystery to explore other corners of our identity.
The variety of his literary legacy (permanently expanding) is demonstrated very clearly by what has reached the big and small screen in recent times. If HBO Max is expanding its series catalog with This: Welcome to Derry It’s because the clown Pennywise, one of Eso’s alter egos, has always had the ability to alter our heartbeats. and this already came from the printed letter. All it took was creators who wanted to give a different touch and offer content for adults and take the proposal to a happy and at the same time disturbing extreme.
The first Stephen King, sheltered under the pseudonym Richard Bachman, also served as inspiration for two new films of very different, yet equally satisfying registers. We talk about The running man which, without being Edgar Wright’s most brilliant film, greatly improves on the previous version of Persecuted (the author himself loved it so much that he describes it as “the Die Hard of our days”) and The long marchwhich in the hands of Francis Lawrence became an extreme but indispensable jewel.
Glen Powell said in the interview he gave us before the premiere and which you can see in full here above, that one of the aspects that caught his attention the most when he had the script for The running man was the relevance of the speech despite four decades having passed since its birth.
This is where the key lies: the well-founded fears of the 70s/80s that we would end up living in an autocracy have not been dispelled, with the media (read social networks or AI) manipulating public opinion and forcing it to take decisions that go against its own interests.
We have this same feeling of contemporaneity in relation to the essential ideas of The long marchalthough deepening its existentialist message because we are facing a majority in a framework of extreme survival designed so that its brutality leads us to consider what makes us free, human, consistent, relevant…
What can we say, at this point, about what it means, therefore, that one of King’s most luminous works, as Chuck’s lifehad its translation into images. What we leave behind when we leave, what microcosm is erased when the show ends.
These are four completely different pieces in tone, genre, visual representation and ambition, but they reflect the variety of Stephen King’s works and the quality of his work that goes far beyond classic horror tropes. He wants to make us think about the world we live in, how it could turn to shit (even more) and keep asking us who we are in this whole process.
He is, in his own right, one of the most adapted literary authors, not only because of his prolific and varied bibliography, which gives rise to different approaches and unlimited possibilities, but because his messages do not expire. You can tell he has his radar on and is also an avid reader and viewer, always worthy of being justified for his rebellion and his courage. Long live the King.