Our own Ryan Scott attended the From Book to Script to Screen panel at the ATX festival in Austin, Texas, where Flanagan was in attendance. During the course of the panel, Flanagan opened up about what it’s like to adapt Stephen King. Specifically, he talked about King’s approach to adaptations of his work. As Flanagan puts it, King has avoided working on these adaptations because takes on his books in the past have been both “radically wrong” and “radically right.” As King puts it (according to Flanagan), “the book is the book, the movie or the show is what it is … If the show or the movie sucks, people will say ‘the book is better,’ and if it’s great, they’ll say ‘of course it’s great, the book is great.'”
In other words, King is understandably playing it safe and avoiding the pitfalls of adapting his own work. And he wins either way. Of course, this raises a question: is King officially done adapting his own books to screen? His “Lisey’s Story” scripts were from 2021, and he hasn’t penned any adaptations of his work since. Is he calling it quits for screenplays? I hope not — I hope King will tackle another script or two in the future. Hell, maybe he can write something directly for the screen again, like he did with the incest-cat-vampire movie “Sleepwalkers.”
