Stephen King

Deadpool might need to watch his back. IT, the latest adaptation of Stephen King’s horror epic, just broke one of the R-rated box office champ’s records — and is primed to break a couple more before the end of the weekend. It’s doubtful that Pennywise will come close to overtaking the Merc With a Mouth’s massive box office haul, but it’s quite a win for the new horror film from Andy Muschietti, which already has a sequel in the works for 2019.

Before the latest adaptation of Stephen King’s IT even hit theaters, early box office predictions suggested anywhere from a $60 to $70 million opening. By contrast, this year’s other big King adaptation, The Dark Tower, has grossed $47.9 million domestic in the month since its release. While we wait for the initial box office numbers to roll in, New Line is already developing a sequel to IT, but it probably won’t hit theaters until 2019.

Stephen King adaptations are a dime a dozen these days (almost literally; rights to his books are famously cheap), but a good Stephen King adaptation, like a properly cooked steak or a movie where Harrison Ford is actually awake, is exceedingly rare. Of the two adaptations of beloved King novels released this year, the idea that IT might be the superior of the pair seemed laughable a few months ago. IT is better than The Dark Tower in every conceivable way, but beyond the inevitable comparison, it’s just really good. Scary good, even.

Perhaps the most frustrating aspect of The Dark Tower isn’t that it failed to live up to expectations decades in the making, or even that it mangled Stephen King’s source material in a way that die-hard fans found unforgivable. No, the most frustrating aspect of The Dark Tower is that it’s just… fine. Despite the plethora of negative reviews, it isn’t some disastrous flop a movie, nor is it an ambitious mess that reached for the stars and came crashing back to earth. It’s just sorta there, a Young Adult action-fantasy film that limps through its paces before ending with a thud. Really, how do you even make a King adaptation that doesn’t have a little bit of ambition?

Historically speaking, Stephen King adaptations tend to be better when the master of literary horror isn’t involved — which may bode well for Andy Muschetti’s new adaptation of IT, as the author recently revealed that he did not participate in the development of his iconic tale of terror. For his part, Muschietti apparently had his reasons, and the way he tells it, they seem like pretty good ones.

This week’s The Dark Tower starring Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey is the first big-budget adaptation of a Stephen King novel in a while, but King’s books and short stories have inspired more than 30 years of great horror, sci-fi, and drama films. Even as The Dark Tower is designed to launch a new franchise based on King’s epic fantasy series, the film is littered with references, homages, and Easter eggs to previous King novels - and to the movies they spawned. In this new video from ScreenCrush’s Britt Hayes and Ryan Arey, we connect all the dots between The Dark Tower and the long history of Stephen King cinema.

You know what they say: Everything is better with friends. That includes fighting an evil demonic clown who lives in town sewer system and has an affinity for Victorian era garb. Wardrobe preference notwithstanding, Pennywise is still pretty darn terrifying, especially if you’re already scared of clowns — in which case, you might want to avoid the new trailer for IT.

Reinventing Stephen King is tricky business, but Spike’s The Mist seems plenty terrifying in its own right. The upcoming adaptation of King’s bleak novella has a brand-new trailer that looks scarier than anything on television.

Further notes on the perils of floating red balloons...

After breaking the record for the most trailer views in a single day, expectations couldn’t be higher for Andres Muschietti’s remake of It. It wasn’t long ago that this seemed like a project destined for trouble; the film’s original director  —  and still credited screenwriter  —  Cary Fukunaga dropped out of the production after the studio wouldn’t budge on letting him make an ‘unconventional’ horror film, causing fans to worry we were in for another bland adaptation of a Stephen King novel. All was forgiven, of course, when New Lined delivered that amazing first It teaser trailer, but could they keep it up?

By this point in a big film’s marketing cycle, we typically would have seen a couple trailers, a ton of posters, lengthy magazine pieces, the works. In contrast, there has been so little concrete info out there on The Dark Tower, which opens in theaters in almost exactly three months, that some people (like, y’know, me) began to doubt whether the movie would open on time, or even if it existed at all.

The Overlook Film Festival just began its inaugural proceedings last night, inviting cinephiles and horror enthusiasts to take in some film with a singular location for a backdrop: the Timberline Lodge in Mt. Hood, Oregon, better known to you as the Overlook Hotel and the setting of Stephen King adaptation The Shining. One could scarcely imagine a scene more apropos for the revelation that another big King remake is in the works, so Blumhouse (you know, the studio behind every horror blockbuster of the last few years) head Jason Blum and director-writer Akiva Goldsman took full advantage of their unique surroundings for a major announcement. And in the immortal words of Nelly, it’s getting hot in here.