Literature is hardly like blockbuster filmmaking, with its flashy billboards, viral trailers, and endless media interviews. Unless you’re J.K. Rowling promoting a new “Harry Potter” book, George R.R. Martin finally finishing his “Game of Thrones” saga, or a precious few others, the vast majority of novelists go unnoticed, typing away or scribbling on a pad of paper behind the scenes.
One writer, however, reached a celebrity status few could claim. While many classic storytellers spend their entire lives releasing unappreciated work, Stephen King found more than enough love for his twisted and compelling ideas — and the smooth, clear way he delivered them.
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Once upon a time, the release of a new Stephen King novel was an “event.” Whether people were gorging on his quick output of novels or their endless film and television adaptations , the man was everywhere: “Carrie,” “The Shining,” “Misery,” “IT,” “Pet Sematary,” and so many others helped him haunt the dreams of generations.
However, after an unfortunate accident in 1999, when King was struck by a vehicle in Maine and needed extensive surgery, his releases slowed. Many people saw the accident as a turning point for the man both professionally and personally, though his output was still massive compared to that of most authors.
Yet his work also didn’t earn the high praise it once did. King reportedly wrote one novel, “Dreamcatcher,” while he was bedridden and recovering from his brush with death. The thick tome of childhood friends and aliens received mixed responses as both a novel and a movie.
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Even King admitted it was not up to par. “I don’t like ‘Dreamcatcher’ very much. ‘Dreamcatcher’ was written after the accident. I was using a lot of Oxycontin for pain. And I couldn’t work on a computer back then because it hurt too much to sit in that position. So I wrote the whole thing longhand. And I was pretty stoned when I wrote it, because of the Oxy, and that’s another book that shows the drugs at work,” King told Rolling Stone in 2014.
Now, however, the world of King is back and with aggressive force. One of the horror writer’s scariest novels, “IT,” has been readapted, and a trailer recently dropped online to near-universal acclaim. If you thought the clown hysteria of a few months ago was behind us, think again — the trailer became the most watched in a 24-hour period, garnering nearly 200 million views worldwide. The film has a release date of September 8.
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King’s most famous book series, “The Dark Tower,” is also getting the movie franchise treatment this summer, with the release of the first of many films on August 4. “The Dark Tower” stars Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey in a fantasy world King created over the course of seven novels. The mythology is so deep and the books so popular, King could be looking at his very own “Game of Thrones” type of franchise.
As an interesting side note, the author is being sued for a whopping $500 million over his “Dark Tower” books. The author of a comic book called “The Rook” claimed in recently filed court documents that King’s “Tower” protagonist Roland Deschain (played by Elba) has too many similarities to his “Rook” character Restin Dane to be coincidence. What must be a pretty big coincidence for the suing author is that his claims are impeccably timed — they’re emerging as “Dark Tower” potentially becomes a major movie franchise. The first book in the series dropped in 1982, so take this suit with a grain of salt.
Beyond “IT” and “Dark Tower,” nostalgia for everything King, now 69, has never been higher. “Castle Rock” was recently put into production by Hulu and producer J.J. Abrams (“Star Wars: The Force Awakens”). The show will be a “Twilight Zone”-like adaptation of various King stories and characters; it will pull material from various novels and weave them into one world, all set in the fictional town of Castle Rock, Maine — a King invention, of course.
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The intense mining of King’s fictional worlds for material suggests the horror master may be reclaiming his throne as celebrity novelist.
It makes sense that the pendulum would be swinging back to the creepy tales the man thought up. For years, horror has lost originality in favor of gore and graphic violence. The “torture porn” genre arose from films such as “Saw” and “Hostel,” and horror movies seem to have since been in a constant competition for “nastiest.”
King’s stories were (and still are) scary because of their mood, their characters, and the moral dilemmas the characters face. His horror is more akin to “Twilight Zone” than “Saw” — and tastes are moving back in that direction as movie watchers have become almost desensitized to unimaginative onscreen brutality.
Love him or hate him, King’s ideas have inspired some of the most imaginative modern works of film and literature out there. However, the author has said that he hates, more than anything, to be asked by fans: “Where do you get your ideas?” In his wonderfully written nonfiction book, “On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft,” he explained why:
“Let’s get one thing clear right now, shall we? There is no Idea Dump, no Story Central, no Island of the Buried Bestsellers; good story ideas seem to come quite literally from nowhere, sailing at you right out of the empty sky: two previously unrelated ideas come together and make something new under the sun. Your job isn’t to find these ideas but to recognize them when they show up.”
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