As a book lover, I’ve read my fair share of Stephen King novels. But, as a movie lover, I’ve also seen my fair share of Stephen King adaptations. That said, many of them, unfortunately, are either pretty bad or even terrible.

However, the good adaptations are often REALLY GOOD. I know everybody likes to point to The Shawshank Redemption as the gold standard (this website even called it the best movie of the ‘90s! - even though I think it’s just good), and I’d like to also add The Shining, The Green Mile, Stand by Me, Carrie, and Misery as cinematic masterpieces based on King’s work. Oh, and one more - The Long Walk.

In fact, in many ways, I think The Long Walk movie is better than the book…but not completely. I’ll explain.

Oh, and major spoilers on the walk ahead.

Why The Film Is Better Than The Book:

The Landscape Is Even More Desolate In The Film

For those unfamiliar with The Long Walk, it’s essentially a dystopian story in which an alternate-timeline America has become controlled by a totalitarian government. Each year, there’s a competition where young men walk for as long as possible, and the last one standing gets whatever they wish for.

People walking for hundreds of miles doesn’t sound like the most riveting story in the world, but this is King we’re talking about here, and he makes this as disturbing as he can for hundreds of pages. Well, in the novel, even though we see the aftermath of what we’re told was a civil war, there does seem to be a lot more people out and about cheering on the walkers.

At one point, there are even groupies who want to hook up with them, and, like, cool. It almost seems like a game show of sorts.

However, I actually like how much more desolate the movie feels. The backdrop is even more depressing and hopeless in the film, and I think it works in its favor…for the most part, which I’ll get into later.

The Friendship Aspect Is Even Sharper In The Film

One of my favorite movies and books of all time is Battle Royale (which Quentin Tarantino, it should be noted, maintains The Hunger Games ripped off). I bring up this story for two reasons. One, it’s similar to The Long Walk since it’s all about a group of people that gradually thin out, and two, because you have to keep track of a lot of characters, and you grow to care about many of them.

Well, in the book, The Long Walk, we get lots of characters, but the most important ones are Ray Garraty (our protagonist), Peter McVries, Stebbins, Art Baker, Gary Barkovitch (our main antagonist, outside of The Major), and a few others.

Now, while friendship is a HUGE part of the novel, I think the one formed by Ray (Cooper Hoffman) and Pete (David Jonsson) is better in the film. Their friendship is pretty pronounced in the book, almost leaning into a possible gay interpretation, whereas in the film, we don’t have the homoerotic undertones between them (Though, I do think it’s cool that you can interpret it that way in the book). Instead, their friendship is more the heart and soul of the movie, which I think is very effective.

Instead of the focus being more spread out to multiple characters like it is in the book, the movie mostly focuses on Pete’s and Ray’s friendship in particular. So, instead of this being a story about many, like in the novel, it really feels like a story about just two people surrounded by many, which works.

The Film Is Also Somehow Even More Dire Than The Book

When we initially reviewed this film, we called it “The Bleakest Stephen King Movie Since The Mist…” and yeah, that’s an apt description. Even though I find the premise of The Long Walk terrifying, I actually don’t find the book to be all that “bleak.” I don’t know, perhaps it’s the chummy way the story is written, but I feel King didn’t make it as bleak and hopeless as some of his other stories like Revival, Cujo, or Pet Semetary.

However, I do think this bleakness really elevates the movie. All of the characters feel like they’re doomed from the very start, and even though they’re joking in the beginning, as soon as that first person gets shot, the story just gets bleaker and bleaker. This consistent dire tone makes the movie stand out from other King stories, which really works in its favor. Because this film is bleak, even despite its ending. Oh, and speaking of which…

Why The Film Is Not As Good As The Book:

The Ending Of The Book Is WAY Better

Now, we’ve already written about it, but the ending of the movie is VERY different from that of the novel…and I don’t think in a good way.

In the book, Ray makes it to the finish line, but after his traumatic and exhausting experience, he doesn’t stop walking. In fact, he sees a phantom ahead of him, and he chases after him, ultimately leaving an ambiguous interpretation about what his fate will ultimately be. Trust me, I’m no Stephen King, but the way he writes this moment is truly terrifying.

The film does a MAJOR swerve, though, in that Pete is actually the victor, and not Ray. In fact, Ray says he doesn't see a future for himself, and by the time Pete realizes what’s going on, it's too late, and Ray gets his ticket punched.

The Major, played by Mark Hamill, says that Pete can get anything he wishes, but Pete chooses a carbine, just like Ray wanted. Pete then kills the Major and walks off, which is different, but I don't think anywhere near as haunting as Ray's spiraling into insanity. So, the book ending shakes me to my bones, and the movie ending doesn’t. Simple.

The Major Was Even More Mysterious In The Book

We don't see much of Hamill's Major in the film, but when we do, he pretty much steals every scene he’s in.

Now, I love Mark Hamill, but I think he’s TOO much of a presence in the movie, whereas the book made The Major a mysterious figure, which I prefer.

In a lot of ways, The Major doesn't even seem like an antagonist in the book. He's more like a symptom of the problem rather than the problem itself, and I’m much more in favor of that. He’s very much a background figure, which is where I think he should be.

The movie does a great job of making the Major an actual flesh-and-blood character, but I really liked the mythic quality of the Major in the book. It was more effective.

The Walk Itself Feels Much More Like An Event In The Book As Opposed To The Film

Now, I know I made a point earlier about how much I liked how desolate this film feels, but another part of me prefers how the walk is more like an actual event in the book.

One of my favorite Stephen King movies that’s nothing like the novel is the original The Running Man with Arnold Schwarzenegger. I love the game show aspect of the film as opposed to the kind of bland approach that the book takes.

However, The Long Walk film feels like the opposite, whereas the event is more exciting in the book than it is in the movie. So, I think the book handled that aspect better in a lot of ways.

That said, both are great. Is The Long Walk book better than the movie? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

As a longtime member of Team CinemaBlend, I am rarely happier than when actors and filmmakers who aren’t known for horror projects voice their desires to make spooky movies. Such splendor usually doesn’t happen with name as big as Christopher Nolan, but the Odyssey director and current box office king is apparently down and eager to get behind the camera for a new horror movie.

Nolan’s admission is heavenly music to my ears, even if Hans Zimmer’s “bwomp” bass is also back there somewhere. The director, who didn’t shy away from horrific imagery in his adaptation of Homer’s epic, voiced his feelings about potentially bringing his talents to horror storytelling with The Empire Film Podcast (via Spotify), saying:

Now, I’m not going to pick a fight with the Oscar winner for that blanketed assessment about the number of “really great horror movies” out there. In comparison to the vast overall number of movies that have been produced, then yes, there are relatively few. But “very few” implies a number lower than I’m willing to accept. That said, I would give my third and fourth eyes to know which horror movies he does consider to be really great, and how many of them rank among CinemaBlend’s Best Horror Movies rankings.

One might ask, “If Chris Nolan wants to make a horror movie, what’s actually stopping him?” And the answer to that question is apparently the Brit’s ability to find the right source material. As he explained:

Considering how much technical wizardry Nolan brings to his films, with IMAX cameras often getting a big focus, I can certainly get how the vast majority of horror narratives might not scale up to what he's used to working with. I can't imagine he'd sign up for any kind of limited-location project in the vein of Exit 8 or Cube, and almost definitely wouldn't be interested in going the found-footage route for a Blair Witch update. (I know one already exists, but I'm just brainstorming.)

As such, it stands to reason that Nolan would be most interested in telling an expansive and layered horror story that wouldn't feel so out of placed paired up with one of his non-epics such as Memento or Insomnia, or possibly even Inception, Interstellar or The Dark Knight. Much as I'd love to believe that A Nightmare on Elm Street fits that bill, I don't foresee Nolan following in Wes Craven's footsteps.

But I do have several ideas in mind for horror projects that the Oppenheimer director could knock out of the park if he ever invested his creative efforts into them. Since I can't very well get inside his brain to determine what kinds of original genre stories he might have kicking around, I opted for a list of novel and comic books that I think would make for solid gold Nolan adaptations.

• House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski - House of Leaves is largely considered an unfilmable tome, given the multiple narratives and timelines being depicted through the core text and the ever-present footnotes. But if there's anyone who can pull off the haunting tale of a man who loses himself inside his increasingly expanding home, it's Nolan.
• American Vampire by Scott Snyder, Stephen King & Rafael Albuquerque - While I'd love to throw several Stephen King works out as potential adaptation fare, his folksy charms don't necessarily mesh with Nolan's. Instead, I think this historical approach to vampires in America would lend itself well to the director's talents, and it's definitely different enough from Sinners to not worry about overlap.
• Gideon Falls by Jeff Lemire and Andrea Sorrentino- Gideon Falls is perhaps my favorite horror comic, written and illustrated by perhaps my favorite writer and artist. So I'd probably slap it into every list I can think of, but I actually do think its massive story about a black barn and those haunted by it (to say the least) would be glorious putty in Nolan's hands.
• A Walk Through Hell by Garth Ennis & Goran Sudžuka - This disturbing tale sees FBI agents taking on the most baffling and depraved case of their careers, and delivers genre thrills while also tapping into true crime elements.
• Survivor Song by Paul Tremblay - Few horror stories get more widescale than tales about infectious outbreaks, and this one comes from one of the best horror authors working, Paul Tremblay.
• Fatale by Ed Brubaker & Sean Phillips - Brubaker & Phillips are best known for Criminal, but they bring the supernatural and old Holllywood into their neo-noir storytelling for Fatale, which centers on a seemingly immortal woman whom men can't help but desire, except for those in the cult trying to kill her.
• Annihilation (All the Southern Reach books, really) by Jeff VanderMeer - Yes, the first of this unnerving quartet of novels was already adapted by Alex Garland in 2018, but that film was not built to tell the entire story, and left a lot of disturbing details by the wayside as a result. With Nolan's brains and budgetary command, Area X could live anew and better than ever.

I could easily keep coming up with new examples of horror movies that Christopher Nolan should make, but I should probably save my energy to pitch one of these in person whenever I next share an elevator with him. Which will definitely be around a quarter to never, so wishful thinking is what I'll be resting my laurels on in the days to come.

While waiting for him to announce his next project, join the many in seeing The Odyssey currently in theaters.

Although the 2026 TV schedule and lineup of movie releases aren’t shaping out to be nearly as big for Stephen King fans as last year’s offerings were, it’s almost a pop culture commandment at this point that at least one adaptation of the King of Horror’s works must be happening at all times. Indeed, several upcoming Stephen King projects are in various stages, and the one I’d argue fans are most invested in is the second season of HBO’s frightfest IT: Welcome to Derry, which has yet to receive an official renewal.

Despite the lack of network announcements, the Derry creative team has been bullish about the prequel horror’s future, with co-creator Andy Muschietti having already revealed his three-season plan to go deeper into IT’s history. Conversations ramped up again in March, as the direction addressed his plan to make an IT feature supercut, and now co-showrunner Brad Caleb Kane has offered what could be our biggest clue yet that Season 2 is absolutely in the works. Check out his Instagram post below:

Even shared without a caption or any other supplemental information, Kane’s post is quite obviously a reference to Pennywise’s party favor of choice: a stark red balloon floating in an unassuming spot. In this particular case, the balloon is seen floating above an unidentified person standing on the Warner Bros. studio lot. (Okay it’s not really floating there, since it’s was added to the pic after the fact.)

Unless Kane is just trolling the hell out of everyone — and he doesn’t seem to be that kinda dude — there are only a couple of logical takeaways one can conjure up from this pic. The first is the most obvious and exciting: IT: Welcome to Derry Season 2 is kicking off production, or at the very least, the pre-production process is ramping up, even if nothing is official just yet.

This presumption seems to align with a social post from the co-showrunner shared a few days earlier, featuring a pic from Hollywood's legendary Vista Theatre and indicated he'll be in town working for a while.

Another possible explanation for the red balloon pic could be that Kane is in L.A. with his fellow IT co-conspirators to formally pitch a working outline for Seasons 2 and 3 to HBO boss Casey Bloys and other execs, with a goal of getting that official two-season renewal. The ratings for Season 1, both on HBO and HBO Max, were definitely positive enough to justify the extension, so it shouldn't take that much convincing, unless the new arcs require unreachably high budget asks.

I don't think Andy Muschietti would doom himself in such a way, though. I think he, Barbara Muschietti and Jason Fuchs are all aware of what the expecations and limitations are for this universe, especially after having put Season 1 together. As such, I think HBO's suits are already blood-soaked with excitement for more Pennywise, and that Kane's teasy pic is a sign that things are definitely floating in the right direction, and that production updates are imminent.

Bill Skarsgård has talked about finding a new approach to playing Pennywise for Season 2, if it happens, and Barbara Muschietti has spoken confidently about filming being more of a "when" issue, and not an "if" question. So get all your clown cosplay gear set up and ready to go. Even if Pennywise won't be back on our TVs this Halloween, we can show support by making sure he's represented everywhere! (Well maybe not at elementary schools and pediatrician offices, but most places.)

Writing about Edgar Wright's adaptation of The Running Man here on CinemaBlend, I haven't exactly been shy in sharing my feelings about the ending: it was a main subject in both my review of the movie and my full analysis of the final scenes was headlined "The Running Man Massively Changes The Ending Of Stephen King's Story, And WTF Was That?" In short, it plays as a major cop out, with dark revelations and events from the source material replaced with illogical Hollywood pablum. I was extremely dissatisfied by the adaptation when I saw it in theaters last fall, and if I'm being totally honest, my feelings have only further steered toward the negative reading the director's latest comments.

Wright's explanation for the controversial ending of The Running Man is the lead development featured in this week's edition of The King Beat, but it's not the lone story from looking back at the last seven days in the world of Stephen King, as a new attempt to ban one of the author's books has caught my eye as being particularly ironic. There's a lot to discuss, so let's dig in!

Edgar Wright's Latest Comments About The Running Man Ending Do Nothing To Make Me Feel Better About The Flawed Stephen King Adaptation

To ever so briefly recap the end of Edgar Wright's The Running Man: Ben Richards (Glen Powell) is left utterly bereft when he learns that his wife and child have been killed while he was competing on the titular game show. When he rejects an offer to become the new lead hunter for Dan Killian (Josh Brolin), the Network takes over the navigation of the plane he's on, and sets up a narrative to label Richards as a thwarted terrorist. Instead of a bleak ending matching the Stephen King book, however, a YouTube-esque video explains that Richards was able to safely eject, a brief supermarket scene reunites the protagonist with his still-alive family; and Richards leads an assault on the set of The Running Man to kill Killian.

In thinking about the terrible final scenes of the movie in the last few months, I've tried to reason out why it's so bad – and my gut told me it was about studio interference and/or test screenings. The movie was produced with a substantial $110 million budget (per Variety), and I imagined that some calculus was done that determined limits to its box office potential with a dark ending. That, or early cuts previewed during post-production upset too many people, forcing reshoots and changes.

My gut was wrong: Edgar Wright takes personal responsibility for the changes to the source material. And while I understand that the movie couldn't directly adapt the ending from the book because of how it retroactively echoes the horrors of September 11, 2001, I am disappointed to hear his explanation for reversing the deaths of Ben Richards' wife and daughter.

New commentary from the filmmaker about The Running Man is featured in the latest issue of Empire, and Wright specifically digs into the significant changes that the film makes from Stephen King's book (first published in 1982 under the pseudonym Richard Bachman). Discussing the fates of Sheila and Cathy Richards, he says that the first crack at the script featured the characters being killed for real, but he didn't have the stomach for the material in subsequent drafts. The writer/director told the magazine,

Here's the problem with that: "too brutal" is what he signed up for. In the run-up to the release of the movie, Edgar Wright explained that his interest in the project began when he was a teenager and recognized that the 1987 film starring Arnold Schwarzenegger is barely a reflection of the book on which it's based. Being a big fan of the novel, he wanted to make a more faithful adaptation, which he very much succeeded in doing… up until the final scenes.

With the book, Stephen King didn't just spit out an edgy ending. The darkness is fitting because the journey Ben Richards goes on through the story exposes the horrors of his fascistic world, full of lies, violence, pollution, corruption, and propaganda, and he is broken by it. Pop culture constantly feeds us hopeful and optimistic ends to these kinds of stories, but it's an emotional and powerful thing to see a hero shatter – as director Francis Lawrence and screenwriter J.T. Mollner perfectly proved last year with the changed but phenomenally effective ending of The Long Walk.

Wright added that there was never a plan to have Ben Richards purposefully fly a plane into the Network headquarters (something he first confirmed more than a month before the movie's theatrical release), but he also explained that the ending was always going to have Richard's journey have a specific impact on his world:

Again, I get avoiding having the film generate any 9/11 comparisons, but I also think the movie is misguided in the "spark of revolution" arena. That is something that The Running Man could have accomplished without faking the deaths of Ben, Sheila, and Cathy Richards: they could have been remembered as martyrs in a new movement led by The Apostle (Daniel Ezra) – eliminating the "Hollywood" stink that is all over the movie we ultimately got.

It's clear that Edgar Wright remains very proud of the movie he made, and while it didn't ultimately perform well in theaters (it finished its worldwide theatrical run earning $68.6 million), he believes that it will ultimately find an audience – which is something that he has personally experienced before in his career. Said the filmmaker,

Should you want to reassess The Running Man, the movie is currently available to stream with a Paramount Plus subscription, or if you're a physical media fan/looking to build the ultimate Stephen King collection, you can purchase the film on 4K UHD, Blu-ray and DVD.

It's Hard Not To See An Extreme Irony In A New Effort To Ban One Of Stephen King's Books

Stephen King is no stranger to having his books banned in various United States school districts. It's something that has been happening for decades, and King has been known to take it as a point of pride when it happens because its recognition of how his work challenges readers with delicate and taboo subject matter, and he encourages readers to seek out those titles when they get taken out of libraries. Generally speaking, I find the bans to be both awful and ridiculous, but recent news out of Jacksonville, Florida has caught my eye because of an effort to remove a specific title: 11.22.63.

Reporting about the initiative comes from WJXT, which says that King's 2011 novel is being challenged along with Vanishing Acts and The Pact by author Jodi Picoult. The news source doesn't specifically explain why 11.22.63 is being targeted, but I can't help but find it extremely ironic given that the work is a passionate love letter dedicated to teachers and education.

The titular date is a reference to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, as the plot of the book sees a protagonist Jake Epping travel back in time to stop Lee Harvey Oswald and potentially create a better future. But Jake is limited to traveling back to 1958, and that necessitates him forging a life for himself in the past until the big day comes. A teacher from his own time, he finds employment as a teacher in the past, and the impact that he has on the lives of his students is magical. There are sequences of sex and violence in the book, but none that outweigh the clear affection that King has for people who dedicate their lives to fostering young generations – and banning that kind of material from schools is straight-up preposterous.

That brings us to the end of this week's edition of The King Beat, but as ever, the publication of this feature means that we are now exactly seven days away from the next, as I'm happy to bring you all of the latest news from the world of Stephen King every Thursday here on CinemaBlend. And while you wait for new stuff, you can dive into the old stuff with my series Adapting Stephen King – an exploration of the long history of King stories in film and television.

In recent weeks, no development in the world of Stephen King has spurred as much chatter as Mike Flanagan's plans to remake The Mist. It came as a shock when the project was first announced in early February, and it stirred up plenty of consternation among Constant Readers who love the heartbreaking movie made by Frank Darabont – including those who have long learned to trust the Gerald's Game/Doctor Sleep/The Life of Chuck filmmaker with the author's work. Since the news was announced, fans have not heard any thoughts from Darabont about the plans, but for this week's edition of The King Beat, I have some commentary from one of the standout stars of the 2007 movie: Sam Witwer.

But as they like to say in informercials, that's not all! This column also has some fresh Stand By Me related commentary – including thoughts about the Rob Reiner film's box office history (following the 40th anniversary re-release of the coming-of-age classic this past weekend) and the new audiobook of "The Body" narrated by Wil Wheaton. There's a lot to discuss, so without further ado, let's dig in.

Sam Witwer Offers Some Interesting Thoughts On The Challenges Facing Mike Flanagan In Adapting The Mist

In Frank Darabont's The Mist, Sam Witwer plays Private Wayne Jessup, which is a character who is memorable for a couple of reasons. One is because of his standout role in the plot, as in addition to being an ally of protagonist David Drayton (Tom Jane), he ends up confessing details of the Arrowhead Project – a local military operation blamed for unleashing the titular fog and the monsters that lurk within it. The other reason is because the character doesn't exist in the source material and was created for the movie by Darabont to address certain issues in the story.

This in mind, the actor had some interesting thoughts to share when CinemaBlend recently asked him about Mike Flanagan's upcoming remake of The Mist. Witwer is currently promoting his role voicing the eponymous lead in the new animated limited series Star Wars: Maul - Shadow Lord, and when we spoke with him this week during the project's virtual press day, we asked for his thoughts about the newly announced Stephen King project. Said Witwer,

It would indeed be very surprising to see Mike Flanagan specifically utilize a character named Wayne Jessup, if not especially because the filmmaker says that the differences in his take on The Mist begin on page one and what fans can expect will not just be a straight remake. That being said, the existence of the character in the 2007 movie points at a couple issues that are rather vital to address in a big screen telling of the story.

Jessup's presence in the film allows certain story developments that effectively add to what Stephen King put on the page. The most obvious is the aforementioned revelations about the Arrowhead Project: it's included more as speculation in the novella but given weight from Jessup in the movie – who cites rumors he hears from the base that offer clarity about the unfolding supernatural terror. His role also serves to significantly add to the threat posed to all of the characters by the fanatical zealot Mrs. Carmody (Marcia Gay Harden): when she calls down the order for Jessup to be killed, and he is ultimately stabbed in the stomach and thrown out of the grocery store, the danger she represents goes from being theoretical to real, and it makes it all the more terrifying when she later sets her targets on David’s son, Billy (Nathan Gamble).

Frank Darabount was essentially able to kill two birds with one stone in having his screenplay introduce the character, and in addition to being cognizant of that significance, Sam Witner's curiosity is piqued wondering what kind of solutions will be found by Mike Flanagan in tackling the same story. The actor continued,

So little is currently known about Mike Flanagan's The Mist that it's hard to properly speculate. A few weeks ago, I thought out a collection of four directions in which the writer/director might be going with the project – from a full reimagining that only maintains the high concept plot to a prequel that further explores the Arrowhead Project – but Flanagan is keeping hush hush about his approach for now.

We also don't know exactly when we might see this movie come together simply because of how outrageously busy the filmmaker is at the moment. His latest Stephen King project, a limited series adaptation of Carrie, is expected to arrive for Amazon Prime subscribers later this year; he is currently in production on the latest title in the Exorcist franchise for Universal Pictures and Blumhouse; and he is ever-working to steer the oil tanker that is his dream version of The Dark Tower. It's unknown how far along his script for The Mist is or if it's possibly already done, and Warner Bros. (the studio producing the project) has not publicly targeted a production schedule or a release date.

It should go without saying that Mike Flanagan's The Mist is a project that I'll be keeping an extremely close eye on in the coming weeks/months/years, so be on the lookout for more updates about the developing film here on The King Beat.

A Few Observations About Stand By Me's Box Office History

This past weekend, Stand By Me was given a theatrical re-release in celebration of the classic film's 40th anniversary, and to be perfectly honest, it ended up not getting much attention. The beloved Stephen King adaptation finished outside the Top 10, landing in 14th place after earning $447,873 from 624 domestic locations. The ticket sales didn't make too much of a dent in the movie's overall box office legacy (not adjusted for inflation, it has made $52. 7 million on the big screen domestically)... but it did lead me to note some fun facts about its original debut in the summer of 1986.

In the run-up to its original theatrical release, mentions of Stephen King's name in the marketing was kept to a minimum, as there was fear that the author's close association with the horror genre would confuse audiences, and the film's success was built on word of mouth. In early August 1986, the box office was being topped by titles like James Cameron's Aliens and David Cronenberg's The Fly, and Stand By Me was initially only released in 16 theaters (per The Numbers) – but after a couple of weeks of hype, it arrived in 745 theaters on August 22, and it ended up staying in/around the Top 10 through the rest of the year – a feat that is totally foreign to the way that the industry operates today.

Stand By Me's original theatrical release ended up running through the end of January 1987, and while its box office numbers don't look particularly gaudy by today's standards, there's something heartening about audiences of the era instantly recognizing its power and laying the foundation for the remarkable legacy that the film is known for today.

Quick Thoughts About Wil Wheaton's New Audiobook Reading Of Stephen King's 'The Body'

Staying on the subject of Stand By Me, the 40th anniversary of the Rob Reiner movie was also celebrated with another special release in recent weeks: a new audiobook recording of Stephen King's novella "The Body" read by Wil Wheaton. At the time that this feature is being published, I'm admittedly only partially through my first listen, but from what I've listened to so far, it's most certainly worth a purchase.

There is obviously something inherently special about the first person perspective being read by the big screen's Gordie LaChance all grown up, but that doesn't prove to be the only hook. While I can't say that Wheaton does the best Mainer accent I've ever heard, he is successful in imbuing the different characters with their special personalities (his impression of Teddy DuChamp's screeching laugh is particularly fun), and there is a beautiful reverence that can be felt for the material that Wheaton is perfect to provide: there is an important wistfulness of the narrator looking back on the remarkable adventure he embarked on when he was just 12-years-old, and you can feel the actor doing that in his reading, with the basis being his experience on the set of Stand By Me.

That brings us to the conclusion of this week's edition of The King Beat, but those of you who need a constant flow a Stephen King in your life need not fret: I'll be back here on CinemaBlend next Thursday with another new feature analyzing the latest developments concerning the author's books and film/TV projects. In the meantime, you can learn all about the long history of King on screen via my series Adapting Stephen King.

Because of weird inside reasons, IT: Welcome To Derry hasn't gotten the official green light for a Season 2 from HBO yet, but that's not stopping work from getting underway. There is a big picture vision for the show, with seasons that travel further back in the canon's timeline, and while we don't know when production will begin on future episodes or when they will premiere, wheels are turning, filmmakers are planning, and writers are writing. And that's not the only current goings on when it comes to the world of IT either, as director Andy Muschietti is also still making promises about his planned IT: Chapter One and Chapter Two supercut.

The filmmakers most recent comments about the blockbuster Stephen King project leads this week's edition of The King Beat, but there is actually a plethora of other developments to highlight as well – including an in-depth interview with Wil Wheaton about "The Body" and Stand By Me; comments from Heather Graham about Mike Flanagan's upcoming Carrie miniseries; and a warning that one of the best Stephen King movies of all time is about to leave Netflix. This is a packed column, so let's dig in!

Andy Muschietti Doubles Down On Supercut Promises Even While Welcome To Derry Takes Precedence

The IT franchise is presently in a very good place. The reason why work is continuing on IT: Welcome To Derry without a renewal is because all of the success experienced at the end of 2025 speaks for itself: the show got a very positive reaction from both critics and fans alike, and ratings only grew during Season 1's eight-episode run, with the finale being the biggest hit. There exists plenty of juice for the brand to try some big swings, and Andy Muschietti is very aware of that fact – but for now, the filmmaker is opting to stay laser focused on the future of the show… instead of side projects like the IT supercut.

The filmmaker himself has multiple irons in the fire (as one example, he's a producer on the new action horror film They Will Kill You, which arrives in theater this Friday), but when it comes to IT, he recently told SlashFilm that Welcome To Derry has his sole focus for now. Said Muschietti,

Muschietti has been talking about making an IT supercut since before IT: Chapter Two was released, and on paper, the idea is pretty simple: instead of IT: Chapter One and IT: Chapter Two being experienced as independent features, he intends to not only edit the existing films together, but to also add back in deleted material. All together, it will be a roughly six-and-a-half hour cinematic experience that properly reflects its epic Stephen King source material.

The big hold-up in making this cut a reality is that not all of the material needed exists: it will require some additional filming. Clearly Muschietti doesn't think it would be any kind of challenge to acquire a proper budget for the work, but there's apparently no time to schedule the work required amid work on IT: Welcome To Derry Season 2.

The danger here should be obvious: if the HBO series ends up petering out in future seasons and loses its audience, that would make it much harder for the director to get the money that he would need for the supercut. There's an argument to be made that he should strike while the proverbial iron is hot, but he clearly has a great deal of confidence in the future of IT: Welcome To Derry (Season 1 of which is available to stream now with a HBO Max subscription).

Stand By Me's Wil Wheaton Discusses His Favorite Scenes In Stephen King's "The Body"

This is a big week for Stand By Me fans. As of two days ago, Stephen King fans everywhere can now purchase and listen to the new audiobook of "The Body" narrated by Wil Wheaton, and starting tomorrow, you can also go to theaters to see the film adaptation on the big screen, as the Rob Reiner movie is getting a domestic re-release to celebrate its 40th anniversary. For some, that might be enough, but if you can't get enough of Stephen King's beloved coming-of-age tale, allow me to recommend a wonderful piece from The New York Times.

In celebration of the new audiobook, the newspaper has published a new multimedia feature centering on Wil Wheaton and his special relationship with "The Body" – which began in the mid-1980s when he was cast as Gordie LaChance in Stand By Me. The interview, featuring film clips and audio excerpts, digs into the actor's favorite scenes from the story, memories from set, and mourns the tragic loss of the adaptation's director.

It's a quick, fun read that is entertaining to explore and insightful about a literary and cinematic masterwork.

Heather Graham Discusses Her Role In Mike Flanagan's Carrie And How It Updates The Classic Stephen King Story

In Mike Flanagan's upcoming Carrie series, Heather Graham is joining the FlanaFamily in what should be a fascinating role – in part because it's one that has been created for the show. People familiar with the Stephen King book and the previous adaptations will remember the evil bully Chris Hargensen, and you may even remember her dad, who complains to the principal when she is barred from prom. One character we've never met is Chris' mom, but that will change with the latest take on King's seminal novel.

Graham has confirmed to Collider that she will be playing Mrs. Hargensen in Mike Flanagan's new series, and while she didn't offer much insight regarding how the character fits into the story in the interview, she did shed some light on how the new take on Carrie will stand apart from both the book and the three feature versions audiences have previously seen. She said,

Obviously even the concept of "cyberbullying" didn't exist when Stephen King wrote Carrie over a half-century ago, and it's not at all surprising that Mike Flanagan is working with a contemporary setting for the show – but Heather Graham's mention of "guns in school" is intriguing. In previously writing about the book and its adaptations, I've made the argument that Carrie White is essentially a supernatural school shooter, and I now wonder how that comparison might be significant in the show's vision.

We'll have to wait and see, as while Heather Graham may have seen the first three episodes of the show, it's been recently suggested by co-star Katee Sackhoff that the Carrie limited series won't be debuting until the fall.

Rob Reiner's Misery Is Leaving Netflix At The End Of The Month, So Watch It While You Can

I'll wrap up this week's King Beat by circling back to the subject of Rob Reiner-directed Stephen King movies. While Stand By Me is playing in theaters this weekend, opening it up to audiences who may never have seen it on the big screen, a particular window is closing for 1990's Misery. The Oscar-winning film is currently available to watch with a few clicks if you have a Netflix subscription, but that won't be the case for long as the brilliant thriller is leaving the library at the end of the month.

March 31 (this coming Tuesday) will be your last day to stream the brilliant classic, which stars James Caan as an author who finds himself the captive of his number one fan… who also happens to be totally out of her mind. Even if you've seen the movie a hundred times, it's worth screening again if not only to witness the genius that is Kathy Bates as Annie Wilkes. And after you watch it, you can check out my piece about the history of both the movie and the novel it's based on.

And if you don't have time to watch Misery in the next few days or simply don't have Netflix, I have great news: it's still widely available to watch elsewhere as well… though you'll have to pay for it. In addition to digital rental and purchase options, Kino Lorber put out a 4K UHD edition in the last few years that is absolutely beautiful.

That brings us to the end of this edition of The King Beat, but there is always more to discuss about Stephen King, and I'll be back here on CinemaBlend next Thursday to highlight all of the most interesting stories that crop up about the author and his beloved work.

Chuck Norris made himself into a legend of the large and small screens alike over the many decades of his career, and the death of the Walker, Texas Ranger vet prompted many celebrities to speak out with tributes to him. Ranging from fellow action stars of the 20th century like Sylvester Stallone and Jean-Claude Van Damme to horror master Stephen King himself, the people mourning his death shared kind words in his memory.

The family of Chuck Norris confirmed that the "sudden" death of the acting legend occurred on March 19, with a statement that they would "like to keep the circumstances private" but also letting well-wishers know that he "was surrounded by his family and was at peace." He died less than two weeks after his 86th birthday, not too long after he was still providing octogenarian workout updates.

Those who knew and respected Norris wasted no time in penning tributes to him on social media after the sad news broke, with Sylvester Stallone sharing this via Instagram in honor of his The Expendables 2 costar:

Fellow Expendables franchise vet Dolph Lundgren, who is making headlines again for his work on the original Masters of the Universe movie, also took the time to share a photo and a kind message. He posted:

Jean-Claude Van Damme, who was name-dropped by Cody Rhodes for his Street Fighter work, is an action star of the same era that produced Chuck Norris... and yet another actor credited with an appearance in The Expendables 2. He wrote on Instagram:

Of course, Norris' body of work didn't just touch the people who he worked with on the big screen, as author Jack Carr made clear on social media as well. Carr wrote The Terminal List source material that inspired Chris Pratt's show of the same name (available streaming now with an Amazon Prime subscription). The former U.S. Navy Commander-turned-writer shared:

Lee Majors, another 20th century TV legend as the star of The Six Million Dollar Man and The Fall Guy, reflected on his time working with Chuck Norris. While Majors may be best remembered for his more prominent projects, he did appear in an episode of Walker, Texas Ranger back in 1998. He wrote on Instagram:

While the late actor is obviously remembered for his body of work in film and television, some people who have never seen an episode of Walker, Texas Ranger, a single second of Firewalker, or witnessed the reunion of action stars in the Expendables franchise may be familiar with him for the genre of humor known as Chuck Norris jokes. Stephen King himself honored Norris on X (formerly known as Twitter) by choosing his two top Chuck Norris jokes:

• "My fave Chuck Norris joke: Chuck doesn't flush the toilet, he scares the shit out of it."
• "Second fave: When he was born, Chuck Norris drove his mother home from the hospital."

Two solid choices from the author! Stephen King, who recently shared high praise for Paradise Season 2, also got serious to name one particular movie that he thinks is "great."

Considering that Stephen King has been scaring the hell out of people going back to the publication of Carrie in 1974, his comment about a somewhat obscure film scaring his kids is a pretty high compliment. All in all, the messages celebrating Norris' life and accomplishments make it feel all the more appropriate that his final post on his own Instagram account prior to the announcement of his death was filled with action:

It's a safe bet that there are plenty more tributes on the way in the wake of Chuck Norris' death, although hopefully the family's request for privacy will be honored. If you want to check out the show that helped solidify his legacy as an actor, you can find Walker, Texas Ranger streaming free on The Roku Channel and Pluto TV.

I consider it a professional responsibility as an editor here at CinemaBlend to try and watch as much film and TV as I can. I watched 166 new releases in 2025, and I can't even give you a rough count of how many shows I watch to keep up with – the aim being to grasp a proper understanding of the broad media landscape and be able to speak on different titles with authority. One series I haven't yet caught up with since it premiered early last year is Paradise, and based on recent commentary from Stephen King, I'm getting the sense that I'm really missing out.

Posted to social media last night, the author's thoughts about one of Hulu's premiere shows is the lead story in this week's edition of The King Beat, but it's not the only headline: a satisfying tease is now online for the new audiobook recording of "The Body," and King has some tried and true advice for fans and young readers after one of his books has been banned from public schools in Utah. There's a lot to discuss, so let's dig in!

Stephen King Praises Paradise Season 2 As Being Superior To Its Predecessor, But It's A Special Part Of His Praise That Raises My Eyebrow

I'm going to be honest: I don't always follow Stephen King's recommendations. In recent years, he got me to watch the spider-centric horror of 2024's Infested and the heavy drama of Baby Reindeer, but I also can't say that I've been in a huge rush to check out Jason Statham in Shelter, which King praised earlier this month. As much as I love almost all of his books, our tastes when it comes to TV and movies don't always match… but I now find myself extremely intrigued by his description of Paradise on Hulu.

I recall Paradise premiering in early 2025 to much acclaim, competing with The Pitt as the most exciting new series available on streaming. That hype didn't get to me, but Stephen King's thoughts on the most recent run have my attention for two reasons: the first is that he says that the trajectory of the quality is going in the right direction, and he likens the show to the works of one of my other favorite authors. He posted on Threads:

While I don't think that quality second seasons are as rare as King suggests here, it's certainly a vital step for a series to create a legacy of greatness. In any first season, the writers are still fine tuning the world and understanding what works about the ensemble of characters, but season two is where all of the learned lessons can be applied.

As for the comment about Elmore Leonard: I can't say I recall any of his books being set in an underground bunker in a post-doomsday society, but I appreciate King's thought; it's clearly being less about comparing Paradise to a Leonard story and more about matching the Get Shorty author's sensibilities. I can't say that really lines up with what else I've heard about the show, but it will get me to at least give the pilot a shot.

Now probably isn't a terrible time to start watching, either. Paradise Season 2 is now in the back half of its run, with the final episodes set to debut for Hulu subscribers on the two Mondays remaining in the month. And there's no worries about a cliffhanger that will never be satisfied either, as the show has already been renewed for a Season 3.

Curious About The New Audiobook Recording Of "The Body" Narrated By Wil Wheaton? A Preview Is Now Available For Your Listening Pleasure

Being a big audiobook fan, I say this with full-throated enthusiasm: the original narrated recording of "The Body," included in the audiobook of the collection Different Seasons, is phenomenal. There are few better ways to experience a Stephen King story than with the voice of the dearly departed Frank Muller, and his reading of King's beloved coming-of-age tale is one the greatest examples of their collaboration (his resume also including the first three Dark Tower sequels, The Green Mile, The Regulators, The Talisman and Black House).

All that being said, I'd be lying to you if I said that I wasn't incredibly curious about the upcoming edition that credits Wil Wheaton as the narrator.

I first wrote about the new audiobook edition of "The Body" last month when Stephen King personally announced that the project was happening, and now that we are less than a week from it being available for download, potential listeners can get a preview of what to expect. Bloody Disgusting has an exclusive clip from the recording, and if you have a copy of the book handy, it's easy to follow along because the read passage is the opening of the novella.

Wheaton, of course, is a special pick to read "The Body" because of his role as Gordie LaChance in director Rob Reiner's beloved adaptation of the story, Stand By Me. The structure of the first person narrative has an adult Gordie looking back on his time growing up in the town of Castle Rock, Maine, and while the role of adult Gordie was played by Richard Dreyfus in the film, Wheaton is now of an appropriate age to take on that part himself for the audiobook.

When the audiobook was first announced, the actor called it a "dream come true" and said that he has been trying for a long time to make the project happen. Making the debut of the audiobook even better is the fact that the release precedes a special theatrical re-release of Stand By Me celebrating the movie's 40th anniversary. You can start listening to "The Body" on Tuesday March 24 (pre-orders are open now via Audible), and check out the week-long theatrical run for the Rob Reiner adaptation starting Friday, March 27.

Stephen King Has A Strong Message After Utah Banned Bag Of Bones From Schools

Stephen King is no stranger to having his books banned from schools. Back in late 2023, 16 of the author's novels were disallowed from a district in Florida, and when the news got to him, he didn't respond with outrage; instead, he reflected on the list with a clear pride, writing on social media, "16 of my books? I must be doing something right."

That same energy can be found on a post on Threads that he put up this week. As reported by the Salt Lake Tribune, Utah has banned Stephen King's 1998 novel Bag Of Bones from all public schools – the latest in a list that now stands at 23 titles – and the author has used the moment as an opportunity to suggest that young people find a way to get their hands on the work elsewhere. He wrote,

This philosophy of King's can actually be traced back multiple decades – starting in 1992 when he wrote a guest column for The Bangor Daily News headlined "The Book-Banners: Adventure in Censorship is Stranger Than Fiction" (addressing The Dead Zone and The Tommyknockers being pulled from middle school libraries in Florida). In 1997, he wrote an essay titled "I Want To Be Typhoid Stevie," and he explained that book bans are not about content but authority:

Bag Of Bones, a book about an author looking to resurrect his talent following the shocking and sudden death of his wife, does feature scenes of intense sexuality and violence… but it also features commentary about abuses of power by the wealthy and depictions of racism and vicious hate crimes. The reason for the book's banning in Utah was not cited by the state – and I should also note that novelists Elana K. Arnold and Ellen Hopkins are among a collection of writers who filed a lawsuit against state officials last month arguing that the recently enacted sensitive materials law is unconstitutional.

That brings an end to this edition of The King Beat, but the constant flow of news about the author and his works has kept this column going for 134 straight weeks, and I have no reason to expect #135 won't be available to read here on CinemaBlend next Thursday. Be sure to head back here then for my new feature, and in the meantime, you can explore the long history of Stephen King in film and television with my series Adapting Stephen King.

For someone just getting into reading the works of Stephen King, I can imagine that the canon looks practically infinite. The man is not just one of the most beloved authors of the last half-century, but also one of the most prolific, and he has had at least one book published every year going back to the mid-1970s. It seems like an endless font, and his continuing work maintains that perception (his next book is coming out in the fall, and he has already lined up at least one title for release in 2027).

I can tell you from personal experience, however, that a terminus does exist, and having personally read every King novel except for one, I find myself feeling torn about how to proceed.

During what has admittedly been a slow week for Stephen King news, I thought I would use this new edition of The King Beat to meditate on this predicament (one I’m sure that other dedicated Constant Readers have faced), but that’s not all, as the last few days also saw the celebration of a notable anniversary: it’s been 40 years since the theatrical release of director Fritz Kiersch ’s Children Of The Corn. Without any further ado, let’s dig in!

Sleeping Beauties Is The Only Stephen King Novel I’ve Yet To Read, And I Don’t Know What To Do

I can trace my personal fanhood of Stephen King back to my childhood when I became entranced by TV airings of director Mary Lambert’s Pet Sematary and the IT miniseries, but I would say I took my Constant Readership to an extreme level about nine years ago. The King renaissance of 2017 – a year that saw the release of six new adaptations – ignited a greater appreciation of the author, and I made the decision to start reading more of his books. And then I started reading more. And more. And more.

But now, I have found myself facing a crisis in my fanhood. Counting shorter books like Cycle Of The Werewolf, In The Tall Grass, Elevation, and last year’s Hansel & Gretel, there are a total of 70 novels in Stephen King’s bibliography, and I have read 69 of them. With only one title remaining, I’m torn about how to proceed.

The book in question is 2017’s Sleeping Beauties, which King co-wrote with his son Owen King, and as for why it specifically is the only one in the canon I haven’t read, I don’t have an answer. Beyond series like the Mr. Mercedes trilogy, the Dark Tower cycle, The Shining/Doctor Sleep etc., I never really put much thought into reading order and just picked via gut. Last year, I ended up pulling both Duma Key and Insomnia off my bookshelf before diving into Never Flinch shortly after it arrived in stores… and now I just have Sleeping Beauties waiting for me.

The reasons to dive into it are probably obvious. There isn’t a single Stephen King book I haven’t had at least some fun reading; I’m interested in forming an opinion about it, as I feel it’s one of the least-discussed King novels; and I don’t relish starving my completionist instincts. By my own standards, those are all perfect excuses to just dive in… and yet, I hesitate and keep going outside the King canon to stall.

Knowing myself, I’m going to devour Other Worlds Than These and The End Times when they are respectively released later this year and in early 2027, but do I really want to have no other King novels to read once I am done with those? Is saying that I have read every single one worth the eventual day when the experience of being transported by a new King story is no longer possible? I have wrestled with those two questions, and thus far, it’s kept my copy of Sleeping Beauties on the shelf.

There is something special and oh so ephemeral about experiencing art from your favorite artist for the first time, and in the case of Stephen King, I don’t know if I’m ready to exhaust one of my last opportunities for that feeling yet. I’ve been going back and forth internally with this conflict for months… and even after writing this piece, I can’t say I feel any closer to a conclusion.

Children Of The Corn: Looking Back On 40 Years Of One Of The Weirdest Stephen King Legacies

I can imagine any author having trepidations about Hollywood – worried about other creatives handling, manipulating and changing their work without their consent – but the history of Stephen King on screen can be viewed as a kind of best case scenario. Two years after his first novel was published, it was brought to life by one of the most respected filmmakers of the era (Brian De Palma), and the seven years that followed saw six more great adaptations, five of which were made by men now recognized legends (Tobe Hooper, Stanley Kubrick, George A. Romero, David Cronenberg, and John Carpenter).

And then, on March 9, 1984 a.k.a. 40 years ago this week, Children Of The Corn arrived in theaters to spoil the streak and go down in history as the first ever bad Stephen King movie.

The short story on which it’s based (best known for being featured in the 1978 collection Night Shift), is a classic King tale tracking a pair of normal Americans who encounter some extreme circumstances. Protagonists Burt and Vicky are a burnt-out married couple who we meet as their relationship is being severely tested by a cross-country roadtrip, and the plot’s inciting incident – they hit a young boy with their car – is only the start of what ends up being a spiraling nightmare. Not just any boy, the kid they hit was trying to escape the hell of Gatlin, Nebraska: a town where all of the children murdered the adults in order to appease a demonic entity promising bountiful harvests named He Who Walks Behind The Rows.

That basic premise wasn’t corrupted by screenwriter George Goldsmith for the 1984 film; the problem is everything else about bringing it to the big screen. The source material simply isn’t long or dense enough to adapt for feature length, and what Goldsmith invented as padding is almost exclusively awful (the one exception being the opening sequence that sees the children of Gatlin carry out their assault). The greatest sin is the introduction of Job (Robby Kiger) and Sarah (Anne Marie McEvoy), who are young siblings terrified of their peers who end up helping Burt and Vicky… and in doing so, spoil the scary, mysterious and alien atmosphere into which the main characters accidentally and tragically stumble.

It’s also really hard to excuse the wholly Hollywood-ified ending, which totally takes the punch out of the story: while neither Burt (Peter Horton) nor Vicky (Linda Hamilton) make it out of King’s version alive (he is killed by He Who Walks Behind The Rows, while she is murdered and crucified by the children), they both survive in the film and successfully set fire to the crops of Gatlin.

Of course, one can’t discuss the larger legacy of Children Of The Corn without discussing the many, many, many sequels. There exists a sizable history of filmmakers trying to expand on King’s work with follow-up features to theatrical releases (The Rage: Carrie 2, Firestarter: Rekindled and The Mangler Reborn are just a few examples), but no franchise matches the longevity of Children Of The Corn, which to date includes eight sequels to the 1984 movie (the last being released in 2018), a 2009 remake, and a 2020 prequel. As far as the broader pop culture impact of these works is concerned, I can’t top what King himself wrote in the essay that precedes the short story in the 2009 collection Stephen King Goes To The Movies:

Should you feel compelled to celebrate the anniversary with a special rewatch of Children Of The Corn, the movie is presently available to stream with an Amazon Prime subscription. And if you’re a physical media collector looking to build the ultimate Stephen King library, your best option is the 4K UHD edition put out by Arrow Video back in 2022.

That brings this week’s edition of The King Beat to a close, but those who are ever-hungry to read more about Stephen King need not exhibit some extreme, masochistic level of patience for more: I’ll be back here on CinemaBlend next Thursday with a fresh column exploring all of the latest goings-on in the world of King. In the meantime, you can learn about the long history of the author’s works in film and television via my series Adapting Stephen King.

Thanks to macro-scale ugly developments in our world, Stephen King hasn’t been nearly as active on social media in the last couple years as he used to be, and that’s a shame. In addition to it just being nice to get regular updates from the author and preview what’s going on in his mind, his posts are fun – be they groan-worthy dad jokes or pictures of his delightful corgi, Molly aka the Thing of Evil. The biggest loss, however, has been his commentary/mini-reviews of new movies, shows and books he’s been checking out. Fortunately, he does still post occasionally, and this week, he offered thoughts about a new Jason Statham action flick that most people ignored on the big screen earlier this year.

That’s not the only story I have for you in this week’s edition of The King Beat, however, as the past seven days have also seen news about an anniversary re-release of Rob Reiner’s Stand By Me and the first information about a new Stephen King novel set for 2027. There’s a lot to discuss, so let’s dig in!

Jason Statham’s Shelter Hasn’t Made Much Of An Impression On Audiences, But Stephen King Calls It ‘Terrific’

Between Meg 2: The Trench, The Beekeeper and A Working Man, Jason Statham has had some solid box office wins in the last few years. His projects don’t tend to be acclaimed blockbusters, but they tend to find worldwide success… or at least they did, until the arrival of his latest film: director Ric Roman Waugh’s Shelter. Released in late January, the 2026 movie definitely qualified as an early-in-the-year bomb – but in the search for any positive outcomes, it can at least be said that Stephen King is a fan.

Shelter arrived in theaters on January 30, and the weekend had so much big box office news (Send Help debuting at number one, Iron Lung making a huge impression as an independent release, and Melania proving to be a terrible investment) that its arrival and disappointing performance was mostly overlooked. One of the most beloved authors of all time recently made a point of seeing the movie, however, and in a post on Bluesky, he hails it as “terrific.” He writes,

Also starring Bill Nighy, Naomi Ackie, and newcomer Bodhi Rae Breathnach, Shelter stars Jason Statham as Michael Mason: a government assassin who has made the call to leave his violent world behind and find peace secretly living alone on a Scottish island. Unfortunately, this peace proves to be short-lived, as his location is discovered, and when his former handler sends killers to try and take him out, he is forced to go on the run.

The movie can’t exactly be called a big budget blockbuster, with Variety reporting that it was produced with a $50 million price tag (a figure that doesn’t include publicity and marketing costs), but it cost enough to be considered a major box office disappointment. Despite playing in over 2,700 locations in the United States and Canada, it only made $5.5 million in its opening weekend and placed sixth in the weekend Top 10. Its theatrical presence faded through February, resulting in it earning just $12.8 million to date, and circumstances aren’t really being improved by its overseas performance either, as the film has only made $29.3 million in foreign markets (I’ll save you the math: its global earnings to date total just $42.1 million).

At this stage in the game, an endorsement from Stephen King probably isn’t improving the legacy of Shelter at the box office (its theatrical run is already over)… but it at least can be said that the social media review has earned the film some very positive notice at a time when practically nobody is paying attention to it. Hell, I’m writing about it in this column, right? If you’re now curious to see the title that has successfully earned the stamp of approval from the author, the movie is now available to rent and/or purchase digitally from all major online retailers.

Stand By Me Is Returning To Theaters To Celebrate The Classic’s 40th Anniversary

To put it plainly, Stand By Me is a special movie. It was released in theaters 40 years ago, and features a story that is principally set nearly 70 years ago, and yet, its story is perfectly timeless – capturing something beautiful and universally true about the experience of growing up and the powerful friendships that we forge when we are young. For fans, there is no number of times one can watch the film without being awed by it, and if you consider yourself such a person, you should be aware that a special big screen re-release is on the way.

While Stand By Me won’t technically celebrate its official anniversary until August (on August 22, to be exact), the film’s landmark birthday is being celebrated later this month with a new theatrical engagement. The classic Stephen King adaptation will be scheduling screenings in select cinemas for a full week starting on March 27.

Of course, what adds extra significance to this event is that this anniversary is the first following the tragic death of director Rob Reiner at the end of last year. Stand By Me has been much discussed in the months since that news broke, as it’s easily considered one of the man’s greatest accomplishments in his dazzling career, and what better way to celebrate the work and the man than by seeing it as it was originally intended to be seen?

To find a cinema location nearest you where Stand By Me screenings will be held, simply head over to the release’s page on Fandango, plug in your zip code, and check the listings.

In The Wake Of The Other Worlds Than These News, A New Stephen King Novel Has Been Announced For 2027

When it came to Stephen King’s book announcement for 2026, Constant Readers had to exhibit an extra touch of patience. While King spent much of 2025 hyping his work on the third book in the Talisman series, he kept us waiting for an official release announcement, and it wasn’t until just a couple weeks ago that he finally revealed the title (Other Worlds Than These) and a publication date (October 6). I suspect that a lot of you have already put in pre-orders for your version of choice – be it hardcover, eReader or audiobook editions – but you should keep your wallet open, as pre-orders are also now available for a new King book coming in 2027.

Last summer, I wrote a segment of The King Beat dedicated to a new serial project that the author was contributing to called The End Times – a fictional newspaper published for a post-apocalyptic world – and that project is now being turned into a full-length novel. The tome, which will be titled The End Times: Volume One, is the result of a collaboration between King and comic book writer/novelist Benjamin Percy, and it’s being published by Bad Hand Books.

The thrust of The End Times is Mary Poole – a dedicated writer and editor living in Minnesota in the aftermath of a deadly pandemic devastating global society. When she discovers an old printing press, she gets to work starting to produce a small-town newspaper, but her purely positive intentions end up finding serious consequences. Per the publisher, “Mary soon discovers there are other, more sinister agendas at work as well.”

As a special extra bonus for Stephen King fans, the project expands on the “lore” of Richard Bachman – King’s pseudonym originally used to publish books including The Long Walk, The Running Man, and Thinner. One of the contributors to Mary’s local newspaper is none other than Claudia Inez Bachman, who is Richard Bachman’s “wife.”

For the book, the material from The End Times newspaper will be reformatted, but for those of you who already read the serialized version, the bound release apparently won’t just be a reprinting of what already exists, as there are plans for the release to include “exclusive material not included in the original serial” as well.

At a pre-shipping cost of $29.99, the novel is available now for pre-order on the Bad Hand Books website. A specific release date has not yet been announced (they are targeting shipping in “early 2027”), but part of the proceeds will go towards a good cause, as Ben Percy is a Minnesota native, and $1 of every book sold from the publisher will go to benefit mutual aid efforts in Minneapolis amid the current strife taking place in the city.

That brings me to the end of this week’s edition of The King Beat, but the flow of new Stephen King updates never stops, so you can expect me to be right back here on CinemaBlend next Thursday with a fresh roundup of all the big news going on concerning the writer and his work.

Ready for an enigma? Because Stephen King fans have spent most of February dealing with a doozy. It began mid month when the news broke that Mike Flanagan – known among Constant Readers for making Gerald’s Game, Doctor Sleep and The Life Of Chuck – had signed a deal with Warner Bros. that will see him tackle a new adaptation of The Mist. Naturally, this caused a bit of controversy among King fans, specifically those who love writer/director Frank Darabont’s film from 2007, and that led Flanagan to explain himself this week: he says that he’s not making a traditional remake, and he is instead “going in a different direction.”

But here’s the rub: if Darabont’s movie already exists as an extremely faithful take on the source material, what can we expect from Flanagan’s approach? I’ve opted to use this week’s edition of The King Beat to address that question, as I have a collection of theories about what the filmmaker is cooking up. Along with the news that a new King short is about to have a U.S. premiere next month in Los Angeles, there’s a whole lot to discuss, so without further ado, let’s dig in!

I Can Imagine At Least Four Ways That Mike Flanagan Can Put A New Spin On The Mist

To date, faithfulness to the source material has been a key part of what has made Mike Flanagan’s Stephen King adaptations so successful. He hasn’t been afraid to make certain alterations when they are called for (always a necessity when translating a story across mediums), but his first instinct is typically to take what was written on the page and bring it to the big screen. That “take” on The Mist already exists, though, which means Flanagan will have to try something a bit more radical.

In an exercise of speculation, I put some thinking into how Flanagan might approach the material – understanding both his passion and sensibilities – and while I have no idea if any of these are right, I have four theories about the path he may end up traveling with the project…

Beyond The High Concept Plot, Everything Is New

When you break it down, the plot of The Mist is very straightforward: a small town is besieged by an eldritch fog full of man-eating monsters, and a collection of people trapped together see a dangerous mix of fear and religious fervor make the situation a billion times worse. In King’s version, said town is in Maine, and the principal characters are trapped in a supermarket, but those are details that can be radically changed and thusly kick start a new narrative based on the same basic narrative hook.

What if it’s a much more diverse community where tensions are already high due to ugly prejudices? What if the story weren’t set in a supermarket, but instead a location with far fewer resources? Those are simple changes that can cascade into whole new directions and set Mike Flanagan’s The Mist apart significantly from the Darabont film.

The Story Gets A Super Modern And Topical Update

You know what was a long time ago? The year 1985, when The Mist was included in the short story collection Skeleton Crew (which itself was five years after the novella was first published in the 1980 collection Dark Forces). You know what was also a long time ago? The year 2007 when Frank Darabont’s movie first premiered in theaters. The world has changed a hell of a lot in the time since those versions of the story, and that alone might be enough creative fuel for Flanagan to work with.

As scary as the monsters are in Stephen King’s tale, the humans are far, far worse, as extreme fear drives people to make extreme decisions, and the results are horrific. It’s not difficult at all to see how this material reflects the radical conflicts we see in communities everyday here in the mid-2020s, and simply updating the setting of The Mist might be enough to set Flanagan’s vision apart from previous versions.

The Story Of The Mist From A Completely Different Perspective

My final theory is my most extreme, and while I have little doubt that it will ultimately be the direction chosen for the new take on The Mist, I figure I’ll throw it out into the universe anyway. In the Stephen King story, it is suggested that all the monster horror is a direct result of a local military base experiment called the Arrowhead Project, which opened a portal to another dimension and let some awful creatures into our world. We only vaguely learn about what actually happened, but perhaps that makes it solid fodder for Mike Flanagan.

Rather than being a remake, this version of The Mist would be more of a prequel and be set at the military base where the Arrowhead Project is being conducted – perhaps echoing the themes of Jurassic Park by questioning the conflict point of morals and possibilities in scientific exploration.

An Arrowhead Project Prequel

The big bad news here is that it might be quite a while before we learn if any of these theories turns out to be right. While Mike Flanagan may now be committed to making The Mist and has already worked out his personal approach, he’s a filmmaker currently in the midst of juggling a number of other projects, including the Carrie limited series, his Exorcist movie for Universal Pictures, and his epic effort to adapt Stephen King’s The Dark Tower. All that being said, as more interesting information about the project comes to light in the coming weeks, months, and years, you can be sure that you’ll be able to find analysis of it here on CinemaBlend.

Japanese Short Film The Dedication, Based On The Stephen King Short Story, Has A U.S. Premiere Date And A Trailer

Stephen King is unquestionably an American writer (very little of his work is set outside the United States), but there is also no questioning his international appeal. In addition to his books selling around the globe, there have been multiple foreign language adaptations of his works produced, including 2003’s Julie Ganapathi (based on the novel Misery) and 2007’s No Smoking (based on the short story Quitter’s Inc). It adds an additional degree of scope to his already epic legacy, and upcoming west coast premiere of the short film The Dedication will see it grow further.

Per Desert Sun, the new work – directed by filmmaker Adrienne Lunson – will be screening as part of the upcoming Golden State Film Festival next month on March 5 at the TCL Chinese Theater. The Japanese-language movie is based on the short story of the same name featured in the 1993 omnibus Nightmares & Dreamscapes, and you can watch the trailer for it below:

In The Dedication, a mother who works as a hotel housekeeper celebrates the publication of her son’s first novel, which is published with a dedication to her on the first page. While discussing the momentous event with a co-worker, she ends up confessing a long-held secret involving paternity, black magic, and murder. The new adaptation, titled Kenji in Japan, is one of the final movies to be produced from King’s famous Dollar Baby Program, which came to an end in the final month of 2023.

If you live in Los Angeles and/or plan to be in the city on March 5, you can to see The Dedication by going to the Golden State Film Festival website and purchasing a ticket for the 6:00 pm Japanese Shorts Block.

That brings us to the end of this week’s edition of The King Beat, but if you’re the kind of person who is evermore in need of new things to read about when it comes to Stephen King, fear not: I’ll be back here on CinemaBlend next Thursday with a brand new column examining all of the latest news going on involving the author’s works and adaptations. In the meantime, you can explore the long history of King in movies and television via my series Adapting Stephen King.

While Mike Flanagan has done nothing but make contributions to the world of Stephen King adaptations, he still managed to cause an uproar last week when it was announced that he has plans to make a new version of The Mist. Frank Darabont's movie is still beloved by many decades after its 2007 theatrical release, and social media was flooded with posts critical of the new project. If you're one of those people, Flanagan now has a message for you: relax!

The filmmaker has been bold when it comes to Stephen King movies – with the source material for Gerald's Game, Doctor Sleep and The Life Of Chuck all possessing special challenges – and he wants fans to know that his vision for The Mist is far from just a money grab. Asked by a fan on BlueSky about the "why" behind the film, Flanagan first wrote (across two posts),

Of the projects he names that have been released, all of them have been critical successes and earned Mike Flanagan new fans – and there is plenty of anticipation for what he has in the works with Carrie (the Amazon Prime series expected to premiere this fall) and his untitled Exorcist movie (which is going to be arriving in theaters next year.)

So what exactly is Flanagan's "why" in the case of The Mist? He's evidently not quite ready to show his hand yet and explain what he wants to do with the Stephen King story, but he does stress in another social media post that he has a great affection for the Frank Darabont adaptation and does not plan to simply rehash what has already been done:

First published in a 1980 anthology titled Dark Forces before being included in King's 1985 omnibus Skeleton Crew, The Mist centers on a collection of people living in a small Maine town who find themselves trapped in a supermarket when an eldritch fog covers the area hiding otherworldly beasts ready to rip apart any humans they find. With the exception of the ending and some other key details, Darabont's movie is an extremely faithful adaptation, so it sounds as though Flanagan is taking the core concept but trying something new with it.

He lastly added:

What will this ultimately look like? We'll all have to exhibit some patience on that front. Given Mike Flanagan's schedule, it seems unlikely that we'll actually get to see his vision for the King novella until at least 2028. In the meantime, we'll be on the constant lookout for more updates as more of his vision for the material is revealed.

If you’re a fan of Stephen King, Roy Lee is a name that you should know. In 2001, he co-founded Vertigo Entertainment, and while the shingle got its start producing remakes of Japanese horror movies – including The Ring and The Grudge – King adaptations have become a big part of the business since the company co-produced Andy Muschietti’s IT in 2017. Since then, Lee has been a key figure in the making of Mike Flanagan’s Doctor Sleep, Gary Dauberman’s Salem’s Lot, Francis Lawrence’s The Long Walk, and The Stand limited series (not to mention IT: Chapter 2 and the prequel series IT: Welcome To Derry)... and there’s plenty more on the way.

For this week’s edition of The King Beat, I have a bit of a special treat, as I had the chance to sit down with Lee in the last few days and got a quick update on where things stand with a number of Stephen King projects that Vertigo Entertainment currently has in the works. But that’s not all, as there is also news to share about a release window for the upcoming Carrie miniseries heading to Amazon Prime later this year. There’s a lot to discuss, so without further ado, let’s dig in!

Producer Roy Lee Offers An Update On Cujo, The Jaunt, The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon And The Tommyknockers Adaptations

Anyone who even casually follows entertainment industry news knows that film development is tricky business. There are exactly zero guarantees that any given project will make it to the production stage, as there are innumerable hurdles that may cause a movie to either get cancelled or stuck in limbo for an eternity. When regular updates aren’t provided, it can be extremely difficult to gauge a title’s progress – which is why I was really excited this week to ask Roy Lee about all of the upcoming King adaptations that Vertigo Entertainment has in the works.

I spoke with the filmmaker on Wednesday during the virtual press day for his new film Psycho Killer (which arrives in theaters everywhere on Friday), and we immediately got on the subject of Stephen King adaptations after I thanked him for his contributions to the canon. He specifically mentioned Cujo and The Jaunt as projects he is now working on, and I followed up by asking about where things are at with other titles he’s been linked to – including The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon and the long-in-the-works The Tommyknockers. Lee explained that they are all titles that are presently at various stages, and their progress is ultimately determined by a mix of getting a proper script and timing. He said,

Of the projects, The Tommyknockers has been developing the longest, as it was in early 2018 that Roy Lee became attached as a producer alongside James Wan. The book, which centers on a town that finds itself under the thrall of an exposed extraterrestrial presence, isn’t one of the most beloved in the Stephen King bibliography, and it’s easy to understand why it’s been difficult to contain the sprawling narrative as a movie.

The Jaunt, based on the short story of the same name, has been in the works since 2021 as a television series with Fear The Walking Dead co-creator Dave Erickson attached. The source material (which can be found collected in 1985’s Skeleton Crew) takes place in a distant future where a teleportation technology called “the jaunt” has been created. The invention is key in helping the human race colonize the solar system, but it has serious consequences if a person is not properly prepped for the experience.

Both Cujo and The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon are projects that were first announced to be in development last year. The former, the iconic horror tale of a woman and child under siege by a rabid Saint Bernard, is in the works at Netflix, and it will reportedly be directed by Darren Aronofsky. The latter, the story of a 9-year-old who gets lost in the vastness of the Appalachian trail while hiking with her mother and brother, is currently set up at Lionsgate (which has a first-look deal with Vertigo Entertainment) and has The Long Walk screenwriter JT Mollner set to both write and direct.

If you think Roy Lee is stopping with those Stephen King projects, however, you’d be wrong. There are plenty of King books that have not yet been adapted, and the filmmaker caught sight of one while looking at my King library in my background:

Insomnia is certainly one of the most challenging books to adapt (following an elderly protagonist who gains an extra level of perception when dealing with the titular sleep disorder), but given Lee’s track record including IT, Doctor Sleep and The Long Walk, he’s a filmmaker I’d trust to make it happen.

Katee Sackhoff Teases That Mike Flanagan’s Carrie Will Be Arriving In Time For Halloween 2026

Up until last year, Mike Flanagan had one hell of a production streak going. For nearly an entire decade, the filmmaker delivered a new fall release every single year, including 2016’s Ouija: Origin Of Evil, 2017’s Gerald’s Game, 2018’s The Haunting Of Hill House, 2019’s Doctor Sleep, 2020’s The Haunting Of Bly Manor, 2021’s Midnight Mass, 2022’s The Midnight Club, 2023’s The Fall Of The House Of Usher and the 2024 TIFF premiere of The Life Of Chuck (which got a theatrical release last spring). That streak is now over – but the good news is that it seems as though Flanagan will be back to entertain audiences for Halloween 2026, as that’s apparently the release window for his upcoming Carrie miniseries.

Amazon Prime Video has not yet announced an official date for the new horror show, but Katee Sackhoff let details slip last weekend during a panel at Fan Expo Vancouver (via The Direct).The project marks the first time that the actress has worked with Flanagan since they made 2013’s Oculus together, and while briefly discussing the series, she offered a hint at distribution plans:

October is now set to be a very rich month for King fans, as it was also announced last week that the month will feature the release of the author’s latest book: Other Worlds Than These (which will be in stores on October 6 and is now available for pre-order).

This is an intriguing tease… but the actress wouldn’t spill more than that in talking about the show. We don’t yet know anything about the role that Sackhoff will be playing, and she wasn’t exactly forthcoming with any spoilers or big revelations. That being said, she did tease that fans will be getting at least two classic elements of Stephen King’s seminal novel”:

She is not alone in the effort to keep lips tightly sealed about the project, as the Carrie limited series has been shrouded in secrecy. One thing we do know about the adaptation is that it will be changing up one specific detail from the source material – specifically that it will feature a larger role for Carrie White’s dad, whose death is reportedly going to be a catalyst for the story.

Summer H. Howell, whose genre credits include Curse Of Chucky, Cult Of Chucky and episodes of the series Channel Zero, is starring as the titular Carrie, and the cast also includes Samantha Sloyan as Margaret White, Siena Agudong as Sue Snell, Alison Thornton as Chris Hargensen, Amber Midthunder as gym teacher Rita Desjardin and Matthew Lillard as Principal Henry Grayle. In addition to Katee Sackhoff, other notable members of the FlanaFamily set to be on the show include Kate Siegel, Michael Trucco, and Rahul Kohli.

The only real bad news about a fall release for Carrie is that this probably means that fans are going to have to exhibit some patience waiting for a proper first-look/trailer for the show, as the promotional campaign probably won’t be kicking off until summer. That being said, as more big and cool information comes to light about the show in coming months, you’ll be able to read about it here on CinemaBlend.

That brings this edition of The King Beat to a conclusion, but because there is perpetually new Stephen King news and information to write about, you can be sure that I’ll be back here on the site next Thursday with a brand new column digging into all of it.

When it comes to Stephen King adaptations, it can be said without a single ounce of hesitation that Mike Flanagan has permanently earned the benefit of the doubt. The man clearly has an overflowing passion for and understanding of the work, and he executes his love in the form of movies that are equally faithful and captivating – his track record including Gerald’s Game, Doctor Sleep, and The Life Of Chuck. The man has given his fellow Constant Readers every reason to trust him when it comes to King on screen… and yet, I can totally understand any and all consternation that may be felt about the recent news that he is now attached to a remake of The Mist, and I’m choosing to address those feelings in this week’s edition of The King Beat.

The last few days have been extremely exciting for King fans, as Monday brought the news that the author’s next novel, Other Worlds Than These (the sequel to The Talisman and Black House), will be arriving in stores everywhere this coming October. Before digging into that news, however, there are some thoughts about Mike Flanagan’s The Mist that I think are worth considering in the earliest days of the project’s development. There’s a whole lot to discuss, so let’s dig in!

The Argument For And Against Mike Flanagan Making A New Adaptation Of The Mist

Stephen King is one of the most adapted authors of all time, with Shakespeare probably being his only real competition in terms of quantity, but there are nonetheless a great number of books by the author that have not yet been source material for film or television. Fans of the author are still waiting for novels like Rose Madder, Insomnia, and The Girl Who Loves Tom Gordon to have their spotlight moment on screen.

So why does Mike Flanagan want to remake The Mist, particularly after already going down the remake path for the Carrie miniseries that will be released later this year?

I’ve been mentally chewing on that question for the last couple of days, and while the filmmaker has not yet publicly commented on the newly announced project (either to officially confirm his involvement or explain his interest), I can recognize both the pluses and the minuses in the venture. In terms of the latter, the challenges are readily apparent: Frank Darabont’s 2007 film an extremely faithful adaptation of the King novella on which it’s based, meaning that significant changes concocted by Flanagan would almost entirely be deviations from the source material; and because the ending of the Darabont movie is so brutal and memorable, a level of expectation is going to be set that is going to be near-impossible to satisfy.

Those are some significant road blocks sitting in front of the project in its earliest days of development, but let’s consider a couple of other points…

The Mist’s Story About People Turning Into Monsters In A Crisis Remains As Relevant As Ever

The Mist is a horror story with an encompassing interdimensional fog and a wide variety of eldritch creations designed to haunt the imagination, but one doesn’t need an advanced degree in media literacy to understand that what’s really scary about the tale isn’t really the otherworldly monsters; it’s the people. The novella is a textbook example of one of Stephen King’s great talents as a storyteller – chronicling what happens when complex, realistic human characters encounter extreme circumstances – and in this case, a small community experiences total breakdown.

It’s a timeless and universal story because it digs at core elements of human nature – but reflecting on its core themes and looking at where things are in society today helps one understand why Flanagan’s remake interest is piqued. Full of discord, prejudice, fear, and confusion, the emotions that flood the small Maine supermarket besieged by extradimensional entities are the same ones that we are seeing dominate much of life in the mid-2020s, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want to see the Doctor Sleep filmmaker’s reflection on that connection.

The Effects In The Frank Darabont Movie, Constrained By The Limited Budget, Have Not Aged Particularly Well

Frank Darabont’s The Mist holds a special place in pop culture history thanks to its aforementioned bleaker-than-bleak ending, but those who know the backstory behind the making of the movie know that the writer/director’s commitment to that ending came part and parcel with consequences: his insistence on the extreme tragedy that plays out in the final minutes meant that he had to settle for a restrictive $17 million budget.

The filmmaker accomplished great things with the money he was given to make The Mist, but you can also see the constraints on screen – particularly where the monsters are concerned. Visual effects have advanced leaps and bounds in the last 19 years, but the CGI doesn’t even look great by 2007 standards. The black-and-white cut is a bit more forgiving because it lends the work the enhanced feeling of a 1950s B-movie, but it’s not a cure.

Mike Flanagan’s The Mist can be an improvement in that arena. The filmmaker hasn’t gotten many opportunities in his career to play around with monster mayhem, and I can see that being a particular draw for him in the making of the project. I won’t get my hopes up that he will be able to have a full-on creature workshop on set that produces all varieties of creatures with practical effects, but I will hold out hope that the VFX work in a new adaptation will look a lot better than what we saw back in the ‘00s.

At present, there are more questions than answers regarding what we can expect from Mike Flanagan’s latest Stephen King project, and it’s never particularly easy to get excited for a remake of a film that doesn’t really need a remake, but there is nonetheless still enough potential here to earn genuine anticipation.

Stephen King’s Other Worlds Than These Is Coming In October, And Fans Can Now Read The Opening Of The Book

There are very few things that are truly consistent in this ever-changing world of ours, but one thing that we can count on is the release of a new Stephen King book every year. The works don’t always come out the same day or even in the same season, but the prolific author has released at least one new tome every year going back to the publication of The Shining in 1977. There was never a question of “if” were were going to get a 2026 title but rather “when” – and we finally got the skinny on what’s happening with the latest novel from King this week.

Titled Other Worlds Than These, the new novel is now set to arrive in stores on October 6, 2026, and it has been promised as the conclusion of the trilogy that also includes 1984’s The Talisman and 2001’s Black House. It’s the first in the series not co-written by Peter Straub, who passed away in 2022, but the author is receiving a posthumous credit, as King developed the novel from an idea the two men discussed prior to Straub’s death.

Officially merging the fantastical world of The Territories from the previous books in the series with the expanse of Mid-World from The Dark Tower, the work will feature the final adventure of protagonist Jack Sawyer, whom we have followed on a cross-country trip to save his mother and joined on the hunt for a serial killer. The story will be a very different kind of adventure, as the magical protagonist can no longer will himself across realities without serious consequences: specifically, he can’t return to his normal life in America without old wounds opening up and killing him. The official plot description from Scribner can be found below:

That’s probably a pretty confusing paragraph if you’re familiar with neither the previous Talisman books nor The Dark Tower, but you now have eight months to familiarize yourself with the canon in preparation. The official release from the publisher announcing the release date for Other Worlds Than These says it can be read as a stand-alone novel, but I have little doubt that much more will be gleaned from the literary experience with the connected books.

For those Constant Readers who are well-aware of what’s going on with Jack, you can get a special preview of the new book via Esquire, which has published what probably amounts to the first couple pages of the novel. The paragraphs do a rather wonderful job both recapping what has happened to the character in the past and teasing the dark place in which he has now found himself.

Should you want to ensure that you’ll be able to get a copy of Other Worlds Than These on the day it’s released, pre-orders are open now for both hardcover and eReader editions.

That brings us to the end of this edition of The King Beat, and while the last few days have been filled with huge news related to the author, the truth is that every week offers at least some kind of new, interesting, and or/exciting development in the world of King – which is why I’m back here on CinemaBlend every Thursday with a brand new column.

Mike Flanagan's record when it comes to Stephen King adaptations is impeccable, and a key part his history is succeeding where he is expected to fail – be it with extremely challenging source material like Gerald's Game and The Life Of Chuck or the pressure of following up Stanley Kubrick's The Shining with Doctor Sleep. He seems to thrive with challenging expectations, and that very much extends to his upcoming King projects. Not only does he have a miniseries version of Carrie coming out this year and an epic take on The Dark Tower in the works, but he is also now taking on a remake of The Mist that is in development at Warner Bros.

That's right: while fans are still trying to recover from the devastating emotional blow that Frank Darabont unleashed with the ending of his adaptation back in 2007, Flanagan is now taking on the challenge of a new take. Per Deadline, the filmmaker is handling screenwriting duties personally, though it's not explained in the trade report if he has a radical take that will differentiate it from versions of the story that fans have already seen.

Should it make it all the way through development and into theaters, Mike Flanagan's The Mist would be the third adaptation of the beloved Stephen King novella, as a short-lived The Mist TV series was produced in 2017. Based on the novella that is featured in the 1985 collection Skeleton Crew, the story is centered on a small town in Maine that gets enveloped in a thick, eldritch fog filled with monsters from another dimension. The emergency situation sees locals gather together in a supermarket to survive, but the horrors outside ultimately pale in comparison to the horrors inside, as the growing fear among the people leads to chaos and violence.

Exactly where this project fits into Mike Flanagan's upcoming schedule is unclear, as we can't forget that the writer/director is also currently developing the new Exorcist movie for Universal Pictures that will be going into production imminently (and boasts an outstanding cast that includes Scarlett Johansson, Jacobi Jupe, Diane Lane, Laurence Fishburne, and Chiwetel Ejiofor). That film is currently scheduled for theatrical release on March 12, 2027 – but it's worth noting that Flanagan is a talented multitasker, as evidenced by his consistent big screen and small screen output over the last decade.

As things stand, there are certainly more questions than answers available about Mike Flanagan's The Mist (again, I am extremely curious to learn how this movie ultimately co-exists in pop culture with Frank Darbont's adaptation), but you can be sure that we'll be following its development closely here on CinemaBlend. As major updates and details come to light, you'll be able to find all of the information available here on the site.

As a Stephen King fan, one of the great joys of my job here at CinemaBlend is that I frequently have the opportunity to talk to the stars and filmmakers who have made film and television adaptations of the author’s stories – digging into both the work itself and their relationships with the legendary writer. Recently getting the opportunity to interview Patton Oswalt, however, I was presented with a unique situation: while the comedian/actor is a devoted Constant Reader, one of the few fandom boxes he has not yet ticked in his career is making a King project.

At this point, what would be the perfect King role for Oswalt? I have what I think is a pretty good idea, and it was one that I suggested directly to him – resulting in the main headline of this week’s edition of The King Beat. But that’s not all, as the past few days have also delivered both exciting news about an upcoming audiobook release, and opportunity to reflect on the one adaptation starring the great Catherine O’Hara: the 1997 Outer Limits episode “The Revelations Of ‘Becka Paulson.” With much to discuss, let’s dig in!

When It Comes Time For Mike Flanagan’s The Dark Tower To Feature Dandelo, I Can Think Of No One Better Than Patton Oswalt

SPOILER WARNING: Before reading any further, you should know that the following contains spoilers for a particular sequence in Stephen King’s last book in the Dark Tower series. Knowing about it won’t ruin your experience of the novel, but if you’re spoiler-phobic, continue at your own risk!

When doing interviews over Zoom, I like to use a section of my physical media collection as a backdrop – specifically about half of my Stephen King library and shelves of movies and TV shows. There have been instances when it’s been a negative, as interviews tend to be short and the background can be a distraction… but in the case of Patton Oswalt, it led to a fun, quick aside about our shared affection for King’s work.

I spoke with the comedian this weekend during the virtual press day for his new animated movie GOAT, but as you can see in the video above, our conversation first took a detour. Having read Oswalt’s books Zombie Spaceship Wasteland and Silver Screen Fiend, I knew going into the interview that he is a Constant Reader, so I wasn’t surprised when he took note of my King collection – and it led me to note that while he has had roles in just about every franchise (Star Trek, Marvel, DC, Ghostbusters, and more), he has never been in a King movie or TV show.

As Oswalt pointed out, however, while he may not have an adaptation on his filmography, he has something possibly even better: he’s namedropped in a Stephen King book. Specifically, he’s mentioned in 2019’s The Institute, in a scene with protagonist Luke Ellis surfing the internet and learning about an upcoming standup performance at the Orpheum Theatre in Minneapolis.

This history in mind, one might think that a role in MGM+’s The Institute Season 2 would be wholly appropriate (and that wouldn’t be wrong), but I had a much more special character in mind for Oswalt – which he responded to with a smile and a mimed call to writer/director Mike Flanagan.

That character? Dandelo from the seventh and final book in the Dark Tower series. It’s not a massive role in the grand scheme of things, as he only encounters the epic’s protagonists once, but it could be an amazing opportunity for Patton Oswalt.

Without getting too into the weeds and giving too much away to those of you who haven’t read the book, Dandelo is a stranger whom protagonist Roland Deschain encounters, and he initially appears friendly – introducing himself as a stand-up comedian named Joe Collins. In truth, though, he is a psychic vampire who drains his victims by making them laugh, much like how IT a.k.a. Pennywise feasts on fear.

I don’t really need to explain much more for you to understand why Oswalt would be great for the part, right? He’s a perfect fit for the disarming Joe Collins persona, and it would be fascinating to see him fully explore his range and become a monstrous cosmic terror. He’s excelled in dramatic roles before (Young Adult and Big Fan being two titles that immediately spring to mind), and it would be amazing to see him as a true terror.

The only downside here is that even if this does ever happen, we are many, many years from actually getting to see it. Mike Flanagan is being very diligent in the development of his Dark Tower adaptation, likening it to navigating an oil tanker, so we may still be years away from seeing the project roll cameras – and even after that point, Dandelo doesn’t show up in the story until what would probably be the second film in Flanagan’s “five seasons of a TV series followed by two features” plan. Even if production were to start in 2027, an annual rollout would mean not getting to see Dandelo until 2032.

Does that make this an act of putting the cart before the horse? No question about it… but these are the things I like to occupy my brain with instead of worrying whether or not the adaptation gets made and the vision gets executed.

“The Body” Is Getting A New Audiobook Presentation With A Perfect Narrator: Wil Wheaton

I am a big audiobook fan, and when it comes to Stephen King novels, a number of the greatest are read by the late Frank Muller. From The Talisman to The Green Mile to three of the Dark Tower books, Muller’s voice is perfectly suited for the author’s prose and enhances the work in special ways. One of the best of the best available is his reading of the collection Different Seasons, which includes the standout novella “The Body” – but even with that in mind, I’m stoked to learn about a new read of the beloved coming-of-age story that is being produced, as it has a perfect performer attached in Wil Wheaton.

King himself revealed the news of the project via Bluesky, his post featuring not only an announcement message but also a video of Wil Wheaton discussing how it’s been a goal of his for “literal years” to record his own reading of the novella. Clearly bursting with joy, Wheaton says,

Of course, the reason why this is so exciting and is such a perfect marriage of narrator and material is because of Wheaton’s role in the 1986 Rob Reiner classic Stand By Me. In the movie, the actor plays Gordon "Gordie" Lachance, and the novella is told from that character’s grown-up perspective, reminiscing about his childhood in 1960s Maine. Richard Dreyfus plays adult Gordie in the movie, but now that Wheaton is an adult himself, he is an ideal fit as a reader for the new audiobook.

The new recording will be made available on March 24, and pre-orders are open now via Audible.

In Praise Of Catherine O’Hara’s “The Revelations Of Becka Paulson”

In the wake of the awful news late last week that Catherine O’Hara has passed away, tributes have been rolling in. Fans have been praising her work from all eras of her career, including the legendary Canadian sketch series SCTV, the Home Alone and Beetlejuice movies, and recent shows such Schitt’s Creek and The Studio – but because this is The King Beat, I want to talk about the single King adaptation featured on her resume.

In the mid-1990s, O’Hara played the titular character in the Outer Limits episode “The Revelations Of ‘Becka Paulson,” and it’s an adaptation that is as weird as it is macabre as it is great. Based on the short story of the same name, the darkly comic tale begins as ‘Becka accidentally shoots herself in the head while getting out her home’s Christmas decorations. Instead of killing her, the injury results in her hearing the voice of a model featured in a picture frame stock photo (Steven Weber), and these visions lead her to get up to some bad business.

O’Hara is terrific in the role, as she plays it perfectly straight and is a kind of vehicle for the oddness of the escalating circumstances around her, resulting in some wonderful and memorable scenes (my personal favorite being an interaction she has when she runs into the local veterinarian). Should you want to give it a watch, it’s available to stream – along with all seven seasons of the Outer Limits 1990s reboot – with an Amazon Prime subscription.

That brings us to the end of this week’s edition of The King Beat, but as ever, I’ll be back next Thursday here on CinemaBlend with a fresh column exploring all of the biggest developments in the world of Stephen King.

The current state of IT: Welcome To Derry has successfully flummoxed fans. The 2025 Stephen King TV series was welcomed with a warm reception by critics, got big ratings numbers throughout its first season (with the finale earning the biggest audience of all)... and yet, HBO has not yet announced any kind of renewal – be it for a single season or multiple seasons. Patience has been tested as we’ve waited for some kind of news since the last episode aired in mid-December, and while we don’t have confirmation today that Season 2 is happening, we do have an extremely optimistic update to share.

During a recent sitdown with HBO chief Casey Bloys, Deadline got an update about IT: Welcome To Derry Season 2, and the news is unexpected: it seems that it’s not executives holding up news of an official renewal, but instead a creative delay. While it seems that the premium cable channel would be all too happy to see more episodes head toward production, an announcement has been slowed by efforts to make sure that the filmmakers know precisely what story they want to tell. Said Bloys,

If you’re a bit confused by this update, I can totally understand. Going into the making of IT: Welcome To Derry, producers Andy and Barbara Muschietti and showrunners Jason Fuchs and Brad Caleb Kane have talked extensively about a big picture plan for the series – one that will each season take place 27 years before the previous one (with 27 years being the amount of time that IT a.k.a. Pennywise spends in hibernation before waking and terrorizing the titular Maine town). But just because there is a framework doesn’t mean that the filmmakers have long known exactly what stories they want to tell within it, and that part of the creative process is apparently holding up Season 2.

As for what we do know: while the show won’t necessarily be abandoning all of the characters we got to know and love from 1962, Season 2 will principally focus on IT’s rampage in the year 1935. Most of what plays out will be newly invented material (including a special new perspective for Bill Skarsgård’s IT), but to contradict Casey Bloys a bit, there is a plan to still use Stephen King’s beloved 1986 novel as key source material – specifically the “Interlude” that recounts the deadly Bradley Gang Massacre that was Pennywise’s coup de grâce of the time period.

It seems that when we get IT: Welcome To Derry Season 2 will wholly depend on when the filmmakers can crack exactly how they want to move forward with the show – which is bad news for impatient people but good news for fans who don’t want to see the series get rushed. It should go without saying that we here at CinemaBlend are keeping a very close eye on developments, so be on the look out for more updates on the site in the coming weeks and months. For now, all episodes of Season 1 are available to watch and rewatch with an HBO Max subscription.

My brain is littered with trivia from the half-century relationship between Stephen King and Hollywood, and among my favorites is a strange connection between the author and director Sam Raimi. While the filmmaker has never taken the helm of a King movie, he’s had on-camera roles in two of adaptations: 1994’s The Stand and 1997’s The Shining. It’s a fun little oddity – but fans of both men know that their connection goes far deeper than that.

Raimi’s new film Send Help is arriving in theaters this week, and CinemaBlend’s own Jeff McCobb recently had the chance to talk with him about the special influence of Stephen King on his career… though the filmmaker admits he doesn’t love the likening of the 2026 movie to Misery. That story and a 20th anniversary reflection on the 2006 novel Cell comprise this week’s edition of The King Beat, so let’s dig in!

Sam Raimi Has Nothing But Love For Stephen King, Who He Credits For His “Chance In The Business”

One of the most admirable aspects of Stephen King’s career is that he has regularly used his influence and success to shine a light on creatives who otherwise might be operating in the dark. In addition to philanthropic acts like providing scholarships and co-founding the Stephen and Tabitha King Foundation, he publicly highlights books he’s reading and movies and television shows he is watching. In recent years, this work has mostly been on social media platforms, but the reality is that his reputation for patronage goes back decades, with the story of Sam Raimi’s The Evil Dead being a perfect example.

It’s a story that Raimi enthusiastically retold during a recent sit down with CinemaBlend – captured in the video above. For those unaware, the filmmaker (along with pals Bruce Campbell and Rob Tappert) made the famed horror movie as their first feature while they were students at Michigan State University, and while the movie is now regarded as a landmark title in the history of the horror genre, it most definitely wasn’t perceived in that light by most when the search began for a distribution deal. Raimi recalled,

While it might be a touch hard to imagine as we exist in a modern cinematic landscape that sees the disgusting insanity of Terrifier 3 become a box office hit, The Evil Dead was considered far too extreme to be palatable for audiences in the early 1980s, and distributors were scared off. The film needed a trusted voice to support it, and it found one in Stephen King.

At the time of the 1982 Cannes Film Festival/Market where this all went down, King was only 8 years removed from the initial publication of his first novel, but he was already well-recognized as a literary phenomenon, his bibliography at that point including Carrie, Salem's Lot, The Shining, The Stand, The Dead Zone, Firestarter and Cujo. Fate put him in the theater for a preview screening of The Evil Dead, and he was floored by the experience. Raimi continued,

The piece for Twilight Zone Magazine – which can easily be found online – is most definitely effusive, as King comes just short of calling the young Raimi a filmmaking prodigy (He writes in the review, “That [Sam Raimi] is a genius is yet unproven; that he has made the most ferociously original horror film of 1982 seems to me beyond doubt.”) The stamp of approval proved transformative for the fate of The Evil Dead, as the movie got critics interested, found distribution in Britain, became an underground success, and eventually got picked up stateside by New Line Cinema.

There is no questioning that Sam Raimi feels a level of indebtedness to Stephen King and has nothing but respect for the master of horror… but he also got honest about not loving how industry trades have drawn a direct line between Send Help and Misery – in regards to both the original novel and Rob Reiner’s Oscar-winning 1990 adaptation.

You May Get Some Misery Vibes From Send Help, But Don’t Let Them Overly Influence Your Experience With The New Horror Movie

When Deadline reported in July 2024 that Raimi was making his latest feature, the article said the movie was a mix of that story and Robert Zemeckis’ Castaway, and the director feels that’s a tad reductive:

It’s a reasonable perspective: no creative wants to be telling an original story and then get told that they are just riffing on a couple of stories that already exist. And while I personally think there are some legitimate points of comparison between Send Help and Misery, there are also considerable differences.

In the new film, Rachel McAdams plays a middle-aged woman named Linda Liddle who gets the opportunity to upend the power dynamic between her and her sexist, nepo baby boss Bradley (Dylan O’Brien) when they survive a plane crash together and get stranded on a deserted island. While Bradley is injured and helpless without the comforts of modern life, Linda is an enthusiastic Survivor fan who is plenty prepared to tame the wild.

In that broad view, it’s not particularly difficult to draw lines between the two films: Linda is the Annie Wilkes to Bradley’s Paul Sheldon. But the details make it much less clear cut. For one thing, Linda is anything but Bradley’s “number one fan,” and while she ends up making some very questionable decisions morally as the story progresses, she is the protagonist instead of the antagonist, and she is not dealing with the same kind of untreated psychological maladies of the iconic Kathy Bates character.

Just as I did in my four-star CinemaBlend review of Send Help, I’m doing my best to dance around spoilers here because I highly recommend anyone and everyone go see it in theaters this weekend, regardless of the strength of the Stephen King vibes. While recognizing that we’re only five weeks into 2026, it’s really hard to imagine that we won’t be looking back on it in December as one of the best genre movies of the year.

On Its 20th Anniversary, Cell Remains One Of The More Confounding Stephen King Books

To close out this week’s column, I’ll highlight a notable anniversary in King history, as it was this week 20 years ago (on February 24, 2006, to be specific) that the novel Cell first arrived in book stores. Arriving about a year-and-a-half before Apple revolutionized the world with the introduction of the iPhone, King’s book looked at the extreme ubiquity of mobile phones in the early years of the 21st century, and he found specific inspiration when he was walking on a street in New York City and saw a man in a business suit who appeared to be talking to himself. Per StephenKing.com. the author confused the man’s use of a wireless headset for a mental episode, and the creative seed was planted.

The novel explores what would happen if everyone’s cell phones began transmitting a signal that first turned people feral before collecting survivors into a giant hive mind, and while it has some interesting ideas, I can’t say it stands among my favorite King novels. A part of the problem is that the action peaks too early, as the chaos that unfurls at the start is far and away its most compelling sequence, and protagonist Clay Riddell and deuteragonists Tom McCourt and Alice Maxwell aren't the kinds of rich characters to which Constant Readers have become well-accustomed.

It’s not the nonsense that can be read from the height of Stephen King’s addictions or post-accident eras (looking at you, Tommyknockers and Dreamcatcher), but I also feel like Cell is the kind of novel from the canon that you only pick up at this point if you’re making the effort to read the author’s full canon.

That brings me to the end of this week’s edition of The King Beat, but as ever, I’ll be back here on CinemaBlend next Thursday with a brand new column highlighting and exploring all of the biggest news to come out of the world of Stephen King. And should you be looking for some related reading while you wait, please peruse my Adapting Stephen King series, reflecting on the full history of movie and TV adaptations of the author’s books and stories.

Back in the summer of 2019, director Andy Muschietti began talking about a tantalizing idea. Although IT: Chapter One and IT: Chapter Two were developed individually (the latter not getting the greenlight until after the first became a box office phenomenon), the filmmaker discussed the idea of creating a supercut with the two features: an edit that would fuse them together into a single cinematic experience. Since then, a good amount of time has passed, and the franchise has grown with the airing of HBO’s IT: Welcome To Derry – but Muschietti is not letting the special project go.

A new update about the supercut’s progress has arrived online, but it’s only one of a few headlines to emerge from the world of Stephen King in the last few days for discussion in this week’s edition of The King Beat. In addition to the latest about the ultimate adaptation of IT, there has also been some big news on the small screen front, as fresh information has come to light about the future of both the aforementioned IT: Welcome To Derry and the MGM+ series The Institute. There is much to discuss, so let’s dig in!

It’s Been Almost Seven Years Since Andy Muscheitti First Discussed Plans For An IT Supercut, But He Is Still Trying To Make It Happen

In an industry that is constantly trying to catch lightning in a bottle and take advantage of heat/the latest trends, seven years is a long time. Typically, a project that takes that long to get made in Hollywood is said to be trapped in development hell, and only the rare title manages to successfully escape. Needless to say, it’s not an optimistic place for any idea to live in… but that’s not dulling Andy Muschietti’s passion about making an IT supercut, and he apparently has the full support of at least one key name: Stephen King.

In a Spanish-language interview that has been posted on Twitter (discovered via Games Radar), Andy Muschietti has provided an update about the IT supercut, and he noted that one of the most recent people to inquire about it was none other than the author himself – who is apparently just as anxious as we are to see the potentially magical project come together. Said the filmmaker,

The idea is relatively simple: while IT: Chapter One and IT: Chapter Two have stories that respectively take place in 1989 and 2016 following the same collection of characters, the idea behind the supercut would be to create an experience that is akin to the book on which the films are based (the novel notably going back and forth between two points in the canon timeline instead of featuring a linear narrative). Muschietti has said in the past that the edit would include not only scenes that got cut out of the theatrical features but would also have brand new material that would need to be shot. He has estimated that the cut would be about six-and-a-half hours long, which is eye-opening when one considers that it takes only a little over five hours to watch the existing blockbusters back-to-back.

Discussing it further, Andy Muschietti explained that his vision involves more than just chopping off the end credits of IT: Chapter One and having the 2016 part of the timeline begin after the young members of the Losers Club disband in the wake of defeating Pennywise; the edit would be far more involved than that. Because of this complexity, one of the great challenges is finding time to invest in it – but the director/producer explained that there is support to get it done:

I can imagine that every Stephen King/IT fan in the world wants this to happen, as its potential is tremendous. In addition to curiosity about the material that got left on the cutting room floor, I’m particularly fascinated in this project because I want to see how it would impact the pacing issues of IT: Chapter Two: a movie hampered by its flashback sequences, as it spends too much time with the young Losers Club and doesn’t let the adults shine independently.

For now, whether or not it will happen is up in the air, if not especially because Andy Muschietti is a pretty busy guy. In addition to being the guy tapped by DC Studios CEOs James Gunn and Peter Safran to direct the upcoming DC blockbuster Batman: The Brave And The Bold, the filmmaker is also part of the future for IT: Welcome To Derry – which is a nice segue into my next King Beat story for the week…

IT: Welcome To Derry Season 2 Is Developing Even Without Getting The Green Light Yet

To be perfectly blunt, IT: Welcome To Derry Season 1 proved to be a huge hit. In addition to getting a positive response from critics, it inspired big numbers both airing on HBO and streaming on HBO Max, and the finale that arrived last month got the most eyeballs of the entire run. Given these circumstances, it’s an odd thing that we have yet to get official word about a renewal, but there is still positive news to report: Season 2 is apparently in active development.

An update about the Stephen King TV series was featured this week in a story from The Hollywood Reporter – albeit not one directly about the HBO show. In breaking the news that screenwriter Christina Hodson has been tapped to collaborate with Andy Muschietti on Batman: Brave And The Bold, the trade report says that work on IT: Welcome To Derry Season 2 has begun despite the fact that news of it happening has not yet been made official.

Can I fully explain this news? No I cannot. I’ve spent weeks being puzzled about the lack of renewal for the show, and that confusion is only heightened by this update – with “Why?” and “How?” being two questions that immediately spring to mind. That being said, I have to take this as good news. In addition to it making me more optimistic that Season 2 will eventually get the greenlight, it’s also nice to know that the extended wait for the official announcement may not slow the development schedule: while I’m not holding my breath for a premiere in fall 2026, I feel like this news keeps 2027 on the table.

The downside, of course, is that we’re going to be waiting regardless. That being said, there is other positive news to share regarding Stephen King on the small screen this year.

Joining Mike Flanagan’s Carrie On The 2026 Calendar, The Institute Season 2 Is Officially Scheduled To Air This Year

For Constant Readers, it’s been hard not to notice the significant dropoff in the number of Stephen King adaptations going from 2025 to 2026. Last year was one of the greatest ever in the relationship between King and Hollywood, as we saw the premiere of four movies and two TV shows, and the coming months only has one new title on the horizon: Mike Flanagan’s Carrie series for Amazon Prime Video.

That’s a whiplash-worthy shift in the number of projects, but there is fresh news that should help those worried about King withdrawal: it’s been confirmed that we will be getting The Institute Season 2 at some point this year.

The news was confirmed by MGM Plus, which posted an update about the show’s future on the streamer’s official Twitter page:

As of now, there is no more specific information about the release beyond “some point in 2026,” but that’s more than enough to inspire curiosity.

Developed by Benjamin Cavell and producer/director Jack Bender, The Institute wasn’t my favorite King adaptation from 2025, but the show is an entertaining and faithful take on its source material, and there are some interesting questions surrounding Season 2. Specifically: because Season 1 managed to cover the entirety of the novel, how will the show move the story forward without King’s ideas to drive it? It should go without saying that this won’t be the last time you read about the series in this column in the coming months.

On that note, we’ve come to the end of this week’s King Beat – but if your hunger for Stephen King news is not fully satiated, don’t fret! The seven day countdown clock for more has begun, as I will be back here on CinemaBlend next Thursday with a brand new feature diving into all of the latest developments involving the legendary author's works in the film, television, and literary worlds.

One of the great pleasures I’ve had during my tenure at CinemaBlend has been covering the full scope of the modern IT adaptations. Back in 2017, I remember asking Finn Wolfhard, Chosen Jacobs, Wyatt Oleff, Jaeden Martell, Jeremy Ray Taylor, Sophia Lillis, and Jack Dylan Grazer about who they wanted to play their adult counterparts in the sequel, and in 2019, I asked those same stars about potentially being part of a 2044 remake of IT: Chapter 2. And late last year, I got to talk to the main cast of IT: Welcome To Derry Season 1, and I got into the weeds about the future of the show with co-showrunner Jason Fuchs.

In the last decade, the only key figure involved with the franchise I never spoke to was Pennywise himself, Bill Skårsgard – but that changed earlier this week.

I spoke with the actor on Monday during a virtual press day for his new movie Dead Man’s Wire, and I made a point of using part of my time to discuss his work on IT: Welcome To Derry. His commentary is the core of this week’s edition of The King Beat, as he discussed his whole new way to look at his most beloved character.

After IT: Welcome To Derry Season 1, Bill Skarsgård Talks Wrapping His Mind Around Pennywise In A Whole New Way

SPOILER WARNING: Before we go any further, know that there are major spoilers for IT: Welcome To Derry Season 1 dead ahead. If you have not yet caught up with the show, use your HBO Max subscription to do so and then get back here!

When it came to reprising his role as Pennywise in IT: Welcome To Derry, Bill Skarsgård was particularly drawn to the project by one key element: the tale of Bob Gray. While the titular IT has existed on Earth for eons, the HBO series offered the actor the opportunity to explore the story behind how the entity took on his dancing clown persona.

Now, of course, that story has been told… but thanks to the show’s Season 1 finale, there’s a whole new special angle to explore: the fascinating way that IT perceives time, and the fact that its consciousness will be be running opposite the reverse chronological plans for yet-to-be-confirmed future seasons (the principal setting shifting from 1962 to 1935 to 1908).

As captured in the video above, I asked Bill Skarsgård about the Welcome To Derry revelation, and he smiled as he discussed his conversations about it with co-creator/producer/director Andy Muschietti – acknowledging the absolute wildness of the character as originally defined by the mind of Stephen King. He began,

If you’ve read IT, you know precisely what he’s talking about. King’s writing is typically very clear and illustrative (King's first editor Bill Thompson liked to say he “has a movie projector in his head”), but there are certain sequences in the epic 1986 novel that challenge the imagination to keep up with its strangest ideas. Thus far, the adaptations have really only skimmed the origins of the titular monster, involving the Macroverse and his great battle with Maturin the turtle.

Continuing, Skarsgård noted that when it comes to the adaptation’s interpretation of the character, all bets are pretty much off, referencing that even Stephen King isn’t really a perfect source for an absolute truth due to the substance abuse issues that the author was dealing with at the time the novel was spilling out of his brain:

The big revelation in discussion here is featured in the IT: Welcome To Derry Season 1 finale after Pennywise successfully manages to isolate Marge Truman (Matilda Lawler) from her friends. The blood-covered clown tells the terrified girl that she will one day become Margaret Tozier and have a boy named Richie who will contribute to its death… or is it its birth? In that moment, we understand that the transdimensional evil doesn’t experience time like a human being.

Skarsgård was hesitant about getting too deep into spoilers from his conversations with Muschietti, not wanting to ruin anything that may potentially come in the future of the show, but how Pennywise perceives time was apparently a notable part of their conversation:

While the collaboration conjured the idea of Pennywise’s unique temporal perspective, Bill Skarsgård gave full credit to Andy Muschietti for the idea of having the evil clown unfurl a Richie Tozier missing person flyer as a callback to IT: Chapter One. He added,

As for where things go from here, that answer is complicated – and that’s even putting aside the fact that fans are still awaiting official news of an IT: Welcome To Derry renewal. In one of the final scenes of Season 1, Marge discusses Pennywise’s comments with Clara Stack’s Lilly Bainbridge and wonders if the shapeshifter could be targeting the family trees of the group we know as The Losers Club, potentially changing its fate in the process. Could that be what’s in store as the focus shifts to 1935 for Season 2 and the show ultimately adapts the infamous Bradley Gang massacre?

Bill Skarsgård doesn’t have the answers as of yet, but he made it clear that he is intrigued by this new direction for his iconic horror villain and the specialness of him being more in sync with the television audience than the citizens of Derry whom it is terrorizing. He concluded,

That last bit is perhaps the most frustrating thing about a delayed announcement for the future of IT: Welcome To Derry (be it a single season renewal or the greenlight to fully execute the three-season plan). The longer we wait for a Season 2 to be made official, the longer we have to wait for wheels to roll into motion and for new episodes to start getting made. As suggested by Skarsgård, it feels unlikely that we’ll see a new run before 2027, and demonstrating patience is going to be rough.

For now, fans will have to settle for satiating themselves with the material we have: Stephen King’s novel and the adaptations IT: Chapter One, IT: Chapter Two and IT: Welcome To Derry Season 1. All three of the latter are currently streaming on HBO Max, and while only the movies are now available in physical media formats, the series will be getting a 4K UHD and Blu-ray release this spring.

That wraps up this week’s very special edition of The King Beat, but this column’s 2026 run is only just beginning. As always, I’ll be back here on CinemaBlend next week with a new feature exploring new developments in the world of Stephen King (perpetually keeping fingers crossed for a Welcome To Derry renewal) – but for those of you looking for something to read in the meantime can explore the full history of the author’s adaptations with my series Adapting Stephen King.

Happy new year, fellow Constant Readers! As I noted in the last edition of The King Beat before the calendar flipped a page, 2026 won’t necessarily be as exciting for Stephen King fans as 2025 was, as there won’t be nearly as many new King adaptations or books released… but that doesn’t mean that there won’t be plenty for devotees to discuss. Since the launch of this column in mid-2023, there has never been a week without at least some kind of interesting development related to King happening in the world… and that continues to be true in this first full week of January.

This new King Beat features three headlines for your enjoyment: first, a piece from my interview with IT: Welcome To Derry co-showrunner Jason Fuchs about another adaptation he’d like to tackle; second, a quick update from writer/director Mike Flanagan about the process being made with The Dark Tower, and lastly, some thoughts on the news that Netflix is no longer developing The Talisman series. There’s a lot to discuss, so let’s dig in!

IT: Welcome To Derry’s Jason Fuchs Wants A Shot At Adapting Insomnia

When it comes to exploring the titular town, the HBO series IT: Welcome To Derry is principally focused on material sourced from Stephen King’s 1986 novel chronicling the terror of Pennywise The Dancing Clown, but any Constant Reader knows that the town’s fictional existence goes beyond what’s featured between the covers of IT. The haunted hamlet is namedropped in a number of different books and stories, and it’s a principal setting in a number of others. Insomnia is one of those titles, and while it’s never been adapted before, it’s a tome with some interesting eyes on it – specifically those belonging to Welcome To Derry co-showrunner Jason Fuchs.

When I spoke with the filmmaker last month in advance of the final episodes of the terrific HBO series premiering, I brought up the subject of the future and other King-related projects he’d like to pursue. The first idea that came to mind was a spinoff centered on Chris Chalk’s Dick Hallorann (following his journey from Derry to the Overlook Hotel), but he also explained his desire to see an adaptation of Insomnia – whether or not he is the one to bring it to life. Said Fuchs,

Not broadly considered to be one of Stephen King’s most beloved books, Insomnia was first published in 1994 and centers on a widower protagonist named Ralph Roberts who finds himself afflicted with the titular sleep disorder. Over time, he finds that his constant state of exhaustion allows him to see into another plane of existence, and this special sight ultimately gets him embroiled in a plot to assassinate a pro-choice activist who is coming to Derry for a speaking engagement.

When Jason Fuchs talks about not knowing about how exactly one would go about adapting Insomnia, it’s because the story is full of wild ideas, including extra-dimensional beings and life strings that can be cut before their time by agents of chaos. Reading the book, one doesn’t have a hard time understanding why Hollywood hasn’t had any success with the story, but that’s exactly why Jason Fuchs wants to see it cracked. He continued,

At present, there are no public plans for any studio to develop an adaptation of Insomnia, but fingers can be kept crossed for the future.

Mike Flanagan Offers A Brief Update On The Progress Of His Dark Tower Adaptation

In my last King Beat column of 2025, I noted that further news about Mike Flanagan’s Dark Tower adaptation was something I was something I was anticipating as far as King-related developments in 2026… but I honestly didn’t expect to get word so fast. We’re not even double-digit days into the new year yet, but already we have some fresh commentary from the filmmaker about his dream project.

We should actually be hearing plenty of Flanagan-King discourse in 2026 thanks to the fact that the filmmaker’s upcoming Carrie series is the only King adaptation currently planned for release in this fresh calendar year, but he provided a brief update about The Dark Tower in an interview with Empire Magazine (via Deadline). Flanagan has been exceptionally busy of late (in addition to Carrie, he is also making a new Exorcist movie with Scarlett Johansson), but he has ensured fans that progress is being made:

Is that much to go on? No it is not. Does it amplify my optimism that the adaptation will get made? Yes it does. Does that same optimism also amplify my overwhelming anxiety worrying that that my expectations are being raised prior to major disappointment? No doubt about it.

Why is getting a proper Dark Tower adaptation so important? One can boil it down to two reasons. The first is that it’s an incredible story that is arguably King’s magnum opus, and it deserves a great adaptation just like so many of his other brilliant books. The second is the fact that the only Dark Tower movie in existence is the abomination that was released in 2017.

I’m generally not in support of filmmakers tearing down the works of others (looking at you, Quentin Tarantino), but Mike Flanagan made a blunt point in the interview in discussion of the infamous flop starring Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey:

If that sentiment alone was the driving force behind Mike Flanagan wanting to get The Dark Tower made, I would have no problem with it, but the larger reality is that his passion for the material is extreme, and I dearly want to see that vision realized.

There are a lot of details that we still don’t know about The Dark Tower (for example, what company will end up handling distribution), but all of those answers will hopefully come in time. Flanagan has previously said that the ideal form would be five seasons of a TV series followed by two features, but he has also likened the process of moving the project along to navigating an oil tanker.

It should go without saying that you should stay tuned here on CinemaBlend for all of the biggest news about the project in the months (and, if we’re being realistic, years) ahead.

I’m Bummed About The Talisman Adaptation Not Happening At Netflix, But It Might End Up Being For The Best

It can officially be said that 2025 will go down in history as one of the best years ever for Stephen King fans… but it can be said that it ended with a kick to the teeth. In the days leading up to the release of the final episodes of Stranger Things, Matt and Ross Duffer revealed that Netflix was no longer developing a series adaptation of The Talisman (a project that first went into development back in early 2021).

As should be clear from the teeth-kicking metaphor, this news can be principally viewed in a negative light, as filmmakers have been trying for decades with zero success to bring The Talisman to either the big or small screen. The fact that we got a proper Long Walk movie first is a wild thing given the creative potency of the wonderful source material. In the hunt for silver linings, however, I can come up with one rather quickly: with Stephen King getting ready to imminently publish the third book in the series, it’s probably for the best that the adaptation isn’t in active development.

For those unaware, The Talisman (co-written by Stephen King and Peter Straub and first published in 1984), was followed in 2001 by the King/Straub-authored Black House, and King announced in early summer 2025 that he has completed work on a trilogy capper. At present, nobody knows what fate holds in store for protagonist Jack Sawyer – but regardless of what happens, I would much prefer that any adaptation of The Talisman be made with that knowledge, as it could end up influencing particular story choice and/or foreshadowing

Per Stephen King scholar Bev Vincent (via director Mick Garris), the Netflix project marks the ninth time that an adaptation for The Talisman has started and stalled… but I’m going to remain hopeful that a tenth attempt – with the upcoming book in canon – will be the first to make it to production.

That brings us to the end of this week’s edition of The King Beat, but as ever, I’ll be back here on CinemaBlend next Thursday with a fresh roundup of all the biggest headlines from the world of Stephen King.

Last month, it was absolutely devastating to learn about Rob Reiner’s death, which was ruled a homicide alongside his wife in the same incident on December 14, 2025. Since the actor/filmmaker's passing, Hollywood has shared a lot of tributes to Reiner, who famously helmed When Harry Met Sally, The Princess Bride, Spinal Tap and so many more movies. However, I don’t think we’ve been talking enough about one movie from his career in particular, which just dropped on a new streaming service.

Rob Reiner’s Misery Just Became Available On Peacock

In 1990, Rob Reiner directed an adaptation of Stephen King’s novel Misery starring James Caan, Kathy Bates and Lauren Bacall. The psychological horror film is about a famous romance novelist who gets held captive in a remote home by an obsessed fan of his. The movie was just added to Peacock. It’s also available to stream with a HBO Max subscription as well, but Peacock has a cheaper monthly plan starting at $7.99, whereas HBO Max is charging $10.99 for their basic plan.

Misery boasts an incredible Rotten Tomatoes score, which is at 91% from critics and a very similar 90% from audiences. Critics and fans agreeing that a movie is pretty much perfect is rather rare, so I’d say this one’s a must watch, whether it’s your first time or one you’re viewing again.

It’s A Great Time To Rewatch The Acclaimed Classic

Misery is one of those movies I’ll literally never forget. When I first saw it, it was on cable when I was too young to be the fan of horror movies I’ve since become. Kathy Bates is absolutely chilling as Annie Wilkes, and it’s considered her most iconic role ever. Apparently Stephen King loved Bates' performance so much that he wrote two more roles for her in the form of 1994's The Stand and 1995’s Dolores Claiborne.

Reiner is known and celebrated best for his comedy movies, but I love Misery for showing a different side of the late filmmaker’s skills, and ability to direct a variety of material. No wonder it seems like fans can’t seem to agree on his definitive movie, lately.

In all seriousness, I haven’t seen Misery since the first time I watched it when I was younger on cable. Now that I’ve watched a lot more of the best horror movies of all time, I’m excited to appreciate the specific way that Rob Reiner chose to contribute to the genre. And considering there were six King adaptations in 2025 alone, it’s worth your time to go back to past adaptations from other filmmakers. Oh, and Reiner also made another famous Stephen King adaptation too – 1986’s Stand By Me, which is currently streaming with a Netflix subscription.

Happy viewing!

The list of upcoming Stephen King adaptations has grown at a rapid rate in recent years, thankfully with the bulk of the announced projects making it through the full production cycle. One such live-action imagining that’s long-confounded Hollywood has been King and Peter Straub’s 1984 bestseller The Talisman, though hopes went sky-high in 2021 when Amblin Entertainment partnered with Netflix and Stranger Things creators Matt and Ross Duffer to craft a Talisman streaming series. Unfortunately, it looks like audiences won’t be visiting Arcadia Beach just yet.

As Stranger Things’ final season wraps up the horrors in Hawkins, the Duffer brothers have been answering myriad questions about the Upside Down (CinemaBlend’s included), but it’s been a while since they’d addressed making the jaunt to The Territories with Jack Sawyer for The Talisman. Comic Book Resources got the latest from the sibling creatives, who shared the rather tragic update that the previously announced adaptation is no longer happening as is. But it sounds like not all hope has been dashed, possibly. As Ross Duffer put it:

That comment was quickly followed by one from the other brother:

Ross Duffer then addressed the fact that this definitely isn't the first time an attempt to get a Talisman adaptation off the ground has come up short. As he put it:

Similar to The Dark Tower, which has also long perplexed writers and directors aiming to bring that epic tale to life in full, The Talisman isn't the usual cup of horror tea that either King or Straub are known for, and the lengthy first novel skews far more darkly fantastical. There's something about this side of King's imagination that's harder to bring from the page to the screen than more visceral realism.

Why There's Still Hope For The Talisman TV Show (Or Movie)

Something that Stephen King fanatics might know, but the general public wouldn't, is that Amblin Entertainment's connection with The Talisman goes back to 1982, when Steven Spielberg essentially talked Universal Pictures into acquiring permanent rights to the novel, as opposed to more traditional licensing windows. So for the past 40+ years, every time a Talisman feature script was written, or when a TNT miniseries adaptation went into development in 2006, Spielberg has always been behind the scenes trying to make the passion project happen.

As such, if the Duffer brothers say they aren't involved anymore, and that it isn't happening at Netflix anymore, neither of those updates indicates a permanent reversal of fortune. It just means Amblin's previous deal with Netflix and the Duffers expired, allowing for another iteration to kick up dust elsewhere. Which is where things get even more potentially interesting.

When announced back in 2021, this latest Talisman adaptation also notably had Paramount Television Studios on board. It's currently unclear whether or not Paramount is still on board in any capacity, especially since the game-changing merger with Skydance happened in the meantime. But if that studio still is in the mix, then it's entirely possible that the Duffer brothers could get right back on board as executive producers.

After all, it was just in August when news broke that Matt and Ross Duffer's Netflix deal was ending in place of a new partnership with Paramount, with the studio shift being prompted by the brothers' goal of directing theatrical features. Obviously this now-defunct attempt was for a series and not a film, but that wouldn't preclude their involvement. In fact, it might just shift the approach back to the feature side if they're in control again.

For now, it's hard to know where things will end up, especially as the final victory lap for Stranger Things has yet to conclude. Hopefully more will come to light once Vecna and his demo-minions are vanquished for good.

When one looks back on the full legacy of Stephen King, 2025 will be remembered as one of the all-time greatest years for the legendary storyteller – and I say that without a trace of worry about recency bias. On the book front, Constant Readers got both the novel Never Flinch and the illustrated fairy tale Hansel & Gretel (not to mention the Stand-inspired anthology The End of the World As We Know It); the big screen saw premieres of Osgood Perkins’ The Monkey, Mike Flanagan’s The Life Of Chuck, Francis Lawrence’s The Long Walk and Edgar Wright’s The Running Man; and the small screen saw debuts of MGM+’s The Institute and HBO’s IT: Welcome To Derry. It was an unprecedented year in the world of King in terms of “new.”

The bad news? After such a rich 12 months, 2026 is going to look a bit bereft by comparison, as there aren’t anywhere near as many new projects set to be published or premiered. That being said, just because there isn’t an overabundance flooding the calendar doesn’t mean that there aren’t some key, exciting developments to follow in the coming year, and so, for this final edition of The King Beat in 2025, I’m going to highlight four key projects that are expected to see significant progress in the near future. It’s a rich and exciting subject, so let’s dig in!

Can Mike Flanagan’s Limited Series Adaptation Of Carrie Deliver Something Audiences Have Never Seen Before?

Mike Flanagan has earned the unbridled trust of Stephen King fans. Gerald’s Game is an emotional, horrific, and thrilling marvel; Doctor Sleep is what I like to call the cinematic equivalent of a miracle, easing decades-long tensions between King and Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining; and The Life Of Chuck can be called one of the most beautiful, humanistic films of the 21st century. Flanagan has repeatedly shown to have a crystal clear understanding of King’s creative visions, and he is two-for-two in adapting what might be considered unadaptable works.

And yet, despite that massively successful track record, there remain some significant question marks around what is presently the only Stephen King adaptation targeting release in 2026: Amazon Prime Video’s limited series Carrie.

One doesn’t need to be a die-hard Stephen King fan to understand any concern. Carrie, which was the first book the author had published, is an iconic work of fiction… and part of the reason for that status is because of past adaptations. Brian DePalma’s film from 1976 is considered by many to be one of the greatest horror movies of all time and set a high bar for all future swings at the material, and yet, we got a TV movie in 2002 (that was originally meant to be a backdoor pilot) and a remake in 2013. The world is so aware of the tale that the titular character’s name is synonymous with any bad high school prom.

We already know what some changes are going to be incorporated with the new take, as it’s been reported that the story will begin shortly after the death of Carrie’s father (a plot development that isn’t in the book), but even with that, there is going to be a heavy onus on the show to have something new to say and develop stakes that keep the audience compelled instead of just waiting for the pigs blood to drop.

What Will Stephen King’s Untitled Sequel To The Talisman And Black House Be?

At this time in 2024, Constant Readers already had the release date of Never Flinch marked on calendars and had started counting down the days until the new Holly Gibney novel would be in stores, but similar promises have not yet been made for 2026. At the time that I am writing this, a Stephen King book is not currently featured on the upcoming publication calendar.

Of course, that’s expected to change. One has to go back to 1976 – between the publication of Salem’s Lot and The Shining – to find a year that didn’t feature at least one new book from the beloved author, and with no anticipation that streak will end, we even have a solid idea of what the new work is going to be. Back in the early summer, King confirmed that he had completed the first draft of the novel that we still only know as The Talisman 3, which fans have been anticipating since the publication of Black House in 2001. We don’t know exactly when it’s coming, but we know that it’s coming.

For the uninitiated, the developing book is the second sequel to The Talisman, which was co-written by King and Peter Straub and first published in 1984. It tells the adventure of a 12-year-old boy who finds himself on a quest for a relic that he is told will help cure his mother of a fatal cancer. Helping to accomplish this mission is a special ability to “flip” to an alternate, fantastical dimension known as The Territories. Black House (also co-written by Straub) reintroduces Jack as a young adult and retired police detective who finds himself on the hunt for a serial killer whom he discovers has ties to the magical world he traveled to as a child.

Because Peter Straub passed away in 2022, the third book will be the first in the series that Stephen King has penned solo – though his collaborator is getting a posthumous credit on the work, having helped develop the idea for the story that his co-author has explored. It has been said by King that inspiration for the book has come from the dark crimes committed by spree killer Charles Starkweather, but it’s unclear what we can expect from the next chapter in the life of Jack Sawyer.

Fans are presently starving for plot details… but for now, I’d settle for just a release date.

Will We Be Getting Two More Seasons Of IT: Welcome To Derry?

Earlier this month, IT: Welcome To Derry aired its Season 1 finale, and while the arc saw the conclusion of Pennywise’s campaign of terror in 1962, there is still a great deal more story to tell. It has been discussed from the very beginning of the show’s development that there is a three-season vision that is being executed, and the plan is to move backwards in time – with Season 2 being principally set in 1935 and Season 3 exploring the events in the eponymous Maine town in 1908.

There is just one big speedbump in the way: HBO has not yet given the green light to a Season 2, let alone a Season 3.

It’s a headscratching development for multiple reasons. For one thing, the premium cable network hasn’t shown a hesitance toward renewals in recent weeks, as it was just in late November that The Chair Company Season 2 was ordered and House Of The Dragon was confirmed to have a Season 4. It’s also not as though the show was unpopular, as it had high viewership from the very start (per The Wrap, it was the third biggest debut ever on HBO Max, behind only House Of The Dragon and The Last Of Us) and the audience only grew (Deadline reports that the finale earned the highest ratings of Season 1).

It’s unclear what is presently stopping HBO from committing to the show. My biggest hope is that it’s a prolonged process because the creatives are aiming to secure a multi-season deal that will ensure that the aforementioned vision for IT: Welcome To Derry gets executed. That would surely be a huge boon, as it would allow the writers to seed certain big picture ideas into Season 2 without the fear of creating loose threads.

Whenever we do finally get news about the future of the Stephen King series, you can be sure that you’ll find reporting on it here on CinemaBlend.

Any Progress For Mike Flanagan’s The Dark Tower Is Good News

Lastly, I’ll circle back to Mike Flanagan, as Carrie isn’t the only Stephen King-related iron he currently has in the fire. He is also currently busy making a new Exorcist movie for Universal Pictures starring Scarlett Johansson, but he is also persistently working to accomplish his dream of crafting a proper adaptation of The Dark Tower.

It was three years ago this month that Flanagan first landed the rights to Stephen King’s multi-genre epic, and while there has been little in the way of what could be called public-facing progress, the filmmaker has consistently remained optimistic about the project. He has described the behind-the-scenes moves to make the adaptation as being akin to navigating an oil tanker, and he noted this past summer that the project is made complicated by the way in which the Dark Tower books utilizes elements from a wide array of books in the King canon.

As far as expectations are concerned, I don’t anticipate that we’ll soon be getting news about casting and a production start date, but I am hopeful that the year ahead will at least provide droplets of good news about The Dark Tower in 2026 that will keep fans around the world confident that Flanagan will eventually make his dream a reality.

With that final, optimistic sentiment, we’ve come to the end of this week’s edition of The King Beat, and I hope it leaves you with some warm feelings about the future as we get ever closer to 2026. While I’ll warn you now that I won’t have a new column live next Thursday, January 1, I’ll be back here on CinemaBlend with a fresh commentary and news from the world of Stephen King one week later on January 8. Happy holidays, fellow Constant Readers!

At the start of every January, I present myself with a fresh movie challenge. I look back at the past year, note how many new releases I watched, and I begin the effort to try and top that number. It’s worked out very well. In 2022, my total ended up being 128, with Everything Everywhere All At Once being my overall favorite (up from 107 in 2021). In 2023, I watched 138 new films, with Poor Things being the one that really blew me away. And in 2024, The Substance was the best of the 140 titles screened. As for this year, I ended up seeing 166 fresh features in 2025, counting both theatrical and streaming titles across all genres, and among them, I saw a lot of amazing stuff.

But what would I consider the best movie among everything I saw? That’s a tough question that I’ve been mulling for much of December, with new delights and surprises emerging every month and causing my rankings to shift… but now I’m out of time, and it’s time to make some calls. I won’t lie and say that the following order might change with a year or even possibly a month of reflection, but what I will say is that the following list represents my favorite 15 films I saw in 2025.

15. The Monkey

I am what could be described as a Stephen King devotee, so in a year when four new adaptations arrived on the big screen, it probably won’t be all that surprising to learn that a number of them made it on this list (spoiler alert: that number is three). It begins with Osgood Perkins’ The Monkey, which is a bonkers and wonderful take on its short story source material and represents a terrific 180-degree turn from the filmmaker’s prior creation (Longlegs was number four on my list last year). Between its blunt sensibilities and gratuitous splatter, I’m 100 percent its target audience.

14. The Rule Of Jenny Pen

James Ashcroft’s The Rule Of Jenny Pen is not just a creepy nightmare; it’s a downright mean movie, and I can get behind that kind of cinematic effort when it’s done right. Geoffrey Rush’s Judge Stefan Mortensen is as unlikable a protagonist as could be found on the big screen in 2025, and he would be the despicable villain in any other story… if it weren’t for the unholy terror that is John Lithgow’s Dave Crealy. The character dynamics are fascinating, while Ashcroft’s direction keeps your fingernails embedded deep in your armrests.

13. Influencers

If it isn’t immediately clear from this list so far, I was particularly impressed with the output from the horror genre in 2025, and it’s a range that spans from major studio releases to indie sequels. Kurtis David Harder’s Influencers is from the latter camp, and if you haven’t yet seen it or its predecessor – 2022’s Influencer – yet, you would be well-served to remedy that. The new sequel has surprises from the jump that make it difficult to recommend without giving too much away, but it can be said that CW (the phenomenal Cassandra Naud) is back and hasn’t lost a step in deftly developing traps for spoiled and jaded internet stars.

12. Train Dreams

Given the sheer volume of movies I watch, I love it when a film can genuinely surprise me, and while that fact is well-represented in this ranking with movies full of twists and clever reveals, Clint Bentley’s Train Dreams is special because it doesn’t deal in big plot machinations or carefully guided arcs. Instead, it opts to be a simple depiction of a tough-but-ordinary 20th-century life, and it’s utterly beautiful. Joel Edgerton delivers one of the most soulful performances of the year as the humble Robert Grainier, and I love its philosophy regarding purpose.

11. No Other Choice

In grasping for silver linings in what are dark times for society, I suppose one is that now might be a burgeoning golden era for both horror and pitch black satire – with Park Chan-wook’s No Other Choice being a tremendous entry in the latter genre. The power of desperation is not to be underestimated, and the journey of Lee Byung-hun’s Man-su to land a coveted job by murdering all of his potential competition is darkly hilarious (in part because Man-sun is not a particularly adept killer) and rich with valuable social commentary.

10. Superman

I think it’s fair to say that the landscape for superhero movies hasn’t been the same since 2020. That has only added to the tremendous challenge facing writer/director/DC Studios co-CEO James Gunn in building the developing DC Universe – but that also makes Superman all the more stunning an accomplishment. It’s a blockbuster properly developed in a post-origins culture in that it offers both what feels like a lived-in world full of colorful characters and a story that emerges from personality and emotion instead of forced plot developments.

9. Final Destination: Bloodlines

The Monkey scratched my itch for complex circumstances resulting in bloody mayhem when it arrived in theaters in February, but there is no true substitute for the Rube Goldberg-esque violence of the Final Destination franchise, and Zach Lipovsky and Adam Stein’s Bloodlines has everything I want as I fan. The kills are extraordinary (there’s a new number one in my ranking of every death scene in the series), and the script does a clever job of both answering big picture questions and maintaining mysteries (keeping the door open for hopefully many, many, many more sequels to come).

8. The Life Of Chuck

Let’s pivot back to talking Stephen King adaptations, shall we? I have spent the majority of the last decade marveling at writer/director Mike Flanagan’s ability to adapt even the most complicated King stories as features (specifically with Gerald’s Game and Doctor Sleep), but The Life Of Chuck is a whole new level. Instead of trying to translate King’s complex novella – structured as three distinct parts that play out in reverse chronological order – Flanagan opts to just trust the source material, his emotional skills as a filmmaker and an outstanding ensemble cast. The result is a gorgeous movie about existence and the miracle of a life lived.

7. Bring Her Back

Is it strange to pivot from the extreme beauty of The Life Of Chuck to the unrelenting grimness of Danny and Michael Philippou’s Bring Her Back? Most definitely, but that’s not something that is really in consideration in constructing this ranking. As was the case with the Australian brothers’ feature debut Talk To Me, my great affection for the work principally comes from two things: the unflinching style that can make even the most seasoned genre veteran flinch and a skill for building lore that opts to trust the audience and doesn’t diminish the terror with an avalanche of exposition. Additionally, based on all of the end-of-year chatter I’ve seen, Sally Hawkins is not getting nearly enough love for her deeply unsettling turn.

6. The Long Walk

We’ve arrived at Stephen King movie #3, and between the extreme content and the logistics of the production, it’s a film that I never expected to get made. But director Francis Lawrence certainly knows a thing or two about big-screen dystopia, and his work on The Long Walk is staggering. The film makes a regular habit of socking you in the gut, both in its violent content and relatable themes, but the beauty within it is remarkable to behold, and the bond between Cooper Hoffman’s Ray Garraty and David Jonsson’s Peter McVries is easily one of the most beautiful things I’ve seen in cinema in 2025.

5. Marty Supreme

Josh Safdie’s Marty Supreme is an enigma, and it’s purely because of Timothée Chalamet’s turn as titular protagonist Marty Mauser. If we were to meet in real life, he’s a guy who I’d want nothing to do with, as arrogance and selfishness radiate so significantly they practically create an aura… and yet, his hustle and quest for glory is one of the most entrancing things I’ve seen in a theater this year. Hating a character but admiring the hell out of his hustle is a strange brew, but it’s an experience that is funny and thrilling in equal measure.

4. If I Had Legs I'd Kick You

While watching Mary Bronstein’s If I Had Legs I'd Kick You, I couldn’t help but reflect on my experiences seeing Josh and Bennie Safdie’s Uncut Gems and Jennifer Kent’s The Babadook: all three films share in common an overwhelming atmosphere that makes the audience want to curl up into a ball and die (and in case it’s not clear, I say that with great admiration). The awesome Rose Byrne makes you feel every ounce of her stress as life becomes evermore punishing, and Bronstein’s impressive and intense handheld style instantly makes her a talent to watch.

3. Weapons

Walking out of Zach Cregger’s Weapons this summer, I was euphoric. This was in large part because of the film’s diabolical and hellacious ending that had the entire theater hooting and hollering, but it was also a reflection of my love for the immaculately crafted experience. The complexity of each dark character is enthralling and wonderful (it’s legitimately hard to pick a favorite from the trio of Julia Garner, Josh Brolin and Amy Madigan), and insistence on ending each chapter right as it hits its climax is cheeky, impish and perfectly earned.

2. Sinners

I knew that Sinners was going to end up toward the top of my end-of-year list when writer/director Ryan Coogler cited inspiration from the Coen brothers, John Carpenter, and Stephen King… and yet, I still found myself wholly bowled over by the experience that the movie delivers. The fantastical musical sequence in the juke joint alone will be remembered as one of the greatest contributions to 21st-century cinema, but every little thing about the film works – from its stunning and powerful ensemble (led by the genius of Michael B. Jordan in the year’s best dual role) to its compelling genre blend of crime and horror.

1. One Battle After Another

In anticipation of Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another, I spent part of my summer reading Thomas Pynchon’s Vineland (the book on which the film is partially based), and for the life of me, I couldn’t fathom how it was going to become a movie. The answer to that puzzle turned out to be “use all of the best stuff, ignore all the rest,” and it’s genius. It’s a perfect film for the moment in which our world currently finds itself – in that it’s both reflective and inspiring – but it’s also just a phenomenal crossbreed of revolutionary thriller and stoner comedy. Anderson adapting Pynchon topped my personal list 11 years ago when Inherent Vice was released, and such is the case again in 2025.

I’ve already started to wonder how many films I’ll see next year: will it be 175? Perhaps 190? Maybe there will be enough must-see material that I end up going over 200. I can’t wait to find out as we move past 2025 and start diving into the 2026 movie release calendar.

Stephen King is a pop culture institution unto himself in Hollywood. One of my favorite statistics I like to regularly cite is the fact that since the release of Brian DePalma’s Carrie in 1976, there have only been nine individual calendar years without at least one new King movie or television adaptation premiering or a new season of an on-going King series. The past year, however, has been special. In 2025, a remarkable total of six new King film and TV projects were given an official release – some ranking among the best Stephen King movies of all time and the best Stephen King TV projects of all time – and they collectively reflect the special range that the legendary author has as a storyteller.

With the opportunity to reflect on the entirety of everything, it can unequivocally be said that 2025 stands right alongside 1983 (the year of Cujo, The Dead Zone and Christine) as one of the best years ever for Stephen King movies and TV, but how do the individual projects size up when compared to one another? Now that IT: Welcome To Derry has completed its first season, I’m ready to declare my rankings – and so, I’m doing so for this week’s edition of The King Beat. If you haven’t seen everything yet, be wary of spoilers, but with that said, let’s dig in!

6. The Running Man

If you had told me at the start of 2025 that I would ultimately regard The Running Man as my least favorite Stephen King adaptation of the year, I would have called you nuts. The novel on which the film is based is one of my favorites in the author’s bibliography, and I’ve long trusted the special skills of writer/director Edgar Wright. At the end of the day, though, I’m not ranking the movie last on this list because I hated it; on the contrary, I mostly liked it – hence my 3.5 star review of the film published last month. The simple reason I liked it least of all the 2025 King movies and TV titles is because the ending is absolutely terrible.

In the run up to the release of the film, I personally vacillated about whether or not I wanted the movie to directly adapt the source material’s exceptionally dark third act, and I ultimately figured that the movie would just find a way to soften it a touch so that it could still be respectable. Instead, the last three scenes are WTF-level bad, and the bad taste that it leaves in your mouth sours what is otherwise a solid and faithful take on the great Stephen King book.

5. The Institute

Premiering during the summer on MGM+, The Institute is a series that took half-a-decade in development to get made, and it arrived with what can be called the least amount of fanfare among 2025 Stephen King adaptations. The book on which it’s based is not what will be remembered as one of the author’s masterpieces, but the series sticks to the source material and does make some smart choices for expansion. It’s good-not-great – but because it didn’t at any point actively enrage me while I was watching it, the show gets saved from the bottom of this ranking.

For Stephen King fans like me, the hook of the show is obvious (read: I will watch anything that is adapted from King’s work), but it’s missing one for anyone who isn’t a Constant Reader. The Institute has a compelling plot courtesy of the novel – following a group of kidnapped, psychically-gifted kids as they work to escape a shadowy facility running experiments – but it never unleashes an aspect that makes it a must recommend. There are no devastating and/or unexpected plot twists, and there aren’t any performances that wow. In the grander legacy of King on TV, I’d put it on the level of the Dead Zone series starring Anthony Michael Hall, but perhaps it will find some ways to improve in its announced second season.

4. The Monkey

Comedy is not really one of Stephen King’s fortes. This isn’t to say that he isn’t funny, as there are many books I could point to that had me laughing out loud while reading. At the same time, it’s never really been a true focus, as none of his novels can be described as a humor-first work. A side effect of this is that there really aren’t many King adaptations that can be described as comedies… which I suppose makes Osgood Perkins’ The Monkey the first, and, by default, the best.

Sandwiched between the tales of extreme darkness that are Longlegs and Keeper in Perkins’ filmography, The Monkey is an outlier for the filmmaker tonally, but it’s a devilishly successful experiment. Every human lives with the knowledge that death can be waiting for us around every corner, and this movie treats that reality as the sick joke that it is – examining death and loss that just so happens to be instigated when a toy simian gets wound up and starts banging on a drum. If it weren’t for an antagonist plot that feels too rushed (no fault of star Theo James, who does great work in a dual performance), it would easily compete for one of top two spots in this ranking.

3. IT: Welcome To Derry

I had my worries about IT: Welcome To Derry. The fact that Bill Skarsgård was a late addition to the cast made me question how much we would get to see of the legendary Pennywise, and early previews made me wonder if the show was falling in one of the same traps that plagued IT: Chapter Two – which is to say trying to recreate the magic of the young Losers Club instead of crafting something new. Now that all eight episodes of Season 1 have aired, I’m thrilled that my concerns proved to be unwarranted, as the HBO series very much has an energy of its own and executes some tremendous canon expansion.

Prequel storytelling is inherently difficult because of the effect that the setting has on stakes (the fates of certain characters, etc.), but IT: Welcome To Derry successfully circumvents the challenge by deepening the lore and introducing an absolutely wonderful collection of original protagonists facing off against the most iconic evil clown in pop culture. It needs to also be said that it honors the oldest Stephen King legacy of them all as a pure horror series, as it unleashes a torrent of unforgettable terrors in every single episode.

2. The Life Of Chuck

When discussing adaptations of his work, Stephen King likes to reference his first editor, Bill Thompson, who liked to say, “Steve has a movie camera in his head.” I sometimes wonder if writer/director Mike Flanagan has magically somehow gotten a hold of that camera, because that would help explain his incredible gift for capturing the author’s work in adaptation. He already had two of the best King movies of all time on his filmography going into this year with Gerald’s Game and Doctor Sleep, and in 2025, he added a third with The Life Of Chuck.

Perhaps the most spectacular thing about The Life Of Chuck is that when you read the novella on which it’s based, it doesn’t read as cinematic at all, and yet, it’s Flanagan’s most faithful adaptation of King’s work to date, and it’s a wonder. As small and insignificant as anybody may feel on a given day, the reality is that there is epic, spontaneous and remarkable beauty in our world, and each and every one of us possesses a grand reality unto ourselves. It’s heady subject matter presented in a complex fashion (in three connected-but-disparate acts that play out in reverse chronological order), but the strength of the vision Flanagan inherits from King is a life-affirming spectacle.

1. The Long Walk

I never thought that I would see the day. That’s the phrase that instantly springs to mind when I think about Francis Lawrence’s The Long Walk. Between the unrelenting bleakness of the narrative (ultimately seeing 49 young men executed because they’ve lost a game) and unique production challenges (having an entire cast perform every take while in perpetual motion), I didn’t believe for a long time that any modern studio would give an adaptation a production budget let alone release it. This year, however, it finally came together, and it’s both one of the best Stephen King movies of all time and the best King adaptation of 2025.

With a less competent directorial vision and a lesser script than the excellent work of JT Mollner, The Long Walk could either be brutally unwatchable or a total snore, but the movie soars principally because it understands the great strength of Stephen King stories: establishing complex and relatable characters and dropping them in extreme circumstances. Ray Garraty and Peter McVries, phenomenally brought to life by stars Cooper Hoffman and David Jonsson, express a deep humanity in the bond of friendship that they form while meeting in competition, and that’s what gives power to its crushing ending – which is shockingly even darker than what’s in King’s novel. It’s a marvel.

Looking into the immediate future, it can be said that 2026 won’t be nearly as exciting for Stephen King fans as 2025 was, as the only upcoming Stephen King project set to premiere is Mike Flanagan’s Carrie limited series for Amazon Prime Video. That being said, every week always offers up new and exciting developments from King’s world, and I plan to be here on CinemaBlend every Thursday in the new year with a fresh edition of The King Beat to explore all of it.

Spoiler warning for anyone who hasn't yet watched the first four episodes of Stranger Things Season 5 via Netflix subscription. And if you somehow haven't seen The Shawshank Redemption yet...whaaat, and why not?! But also, spoilers for that.

Roughly a bazillion people watched the first four episodes of Stranger Things’ final season set the stage for a catastrophic conclusion, at least for certain evil-mongering characters who use alter egos to kidnap children. The fourth installment, “Sorcerer,” shockingly brought back Season 2’s Kali/Eight, finally gave Sadie Sink’s Max some screen time, and turned new fan-fave character Derek Turnbow from dipshit to delightful. You know what didn’t happen, though? A Shawshank Redemption reference that I’d have bet money on being in the ep.

The prediction? I’ll get to that more in full lower down, but I basically thought Finn Wolfhard’s Mike would get covered in shit at some point, which I realize sounds like random and unhealthy guesswork for a TV series. In hindsight, it does seem a bit silly, but that doesn’t diminish my ongoing feelings of dismay. Not so much that I was wrong, but that nobody took advantage of this clear path to an icky easter egg. Let's look at the evidence!

Clue #1: Frank Darabont's A Major Part Of Stranger Things Season 5

There wouldn't be any reason to bring up The Shawshank Redemption in reference to Stranger Things if it wasn't for the directorial efforts of the great Frank Darabont. The genre master not only helped bring The Walking Dead to TV (before a major falling out), but he also directed three of the best Stephen King adaptations out there, with Shawshank high on that list.

Notably, he hadn't helmed any films or TV episodes since 2013's one-and-done season of Mob City, but Matt and Ross Duffer coaxed him into getting behind the camera for not just one, but two of the lengthy Season 5 installments. Beyond the Duffers and producer Shawn Levy, Darabont is the only other director who was utilized for the final run.

To be clear, Frank Darabont did not direct "Sorceror," and was responsible for the third and yet-to-stream fifth episodes, with the Duffer bros. taking on Ep. 4. But to me, that just makes it more likely that the reference would have happened, since Darabont is probably too classy, non-dorky to reference his own work in such a way. Much easier to imagine the Duffers doing it themselves.

Clue #2: It's A Tunnel Escape In A Show That Vibes Hard On Stephen King

To be sure, this prediction is nothing without Frank Darabont, but he wasn't involved with the past four seasons, and Stranger Things' creators have never shied away from the idea that Stephen King was a major influence on their lives and the show itself. Granted, the more horror-based inspirations are clearer than others, but it doesn't break reality to think the Duffers also like King's more dramatic fare like the novella "Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption," which was released to the world at large through Different Seasons.

Plus, this episode involves something of a jail break, even if it's not an actual jail, as well as tunnels. I do realize that Robin made the very clear connection to The Great Escape and explained those ins and outs directly. That still didn't sway me though, for I just assumed that was meant as a distraction from the true movie reference waiting to be made.

Clue #3: Mike's Reaction To Multiple Incidents Was Some Form Of "Shit"

For whatever reason, Finn Wolfhard seemed to have been given a quota for Stranger Things' four-letter words, and his reaction to seemingly every moment that went awry in "Sorceror" was to say some version of "Shit." It occurred at least three times, and possibly more, and I don't recall that over-usage happening in the previous episodes.

One of those utterances came after Mike and Lucas started getting kids into the tunnels and out of the government's stronghold, when Wolfhard's character realizes that the bathroom's pipes are in danger of bursting. This should have been the smoking gun, as it were.

My Misguided Prediction: Mike Would Get Covered In Poop During The Escape, Andy Dufresne-Style

With all of the above details at play, I was fully expecting some Beetlejuice-esque logic where "shit" being said enough times causes reality to manifest it. I thought that there would be a slew of pipe-related malfunctions that would leave Mike, and possibly all of the other escapees covered from head to toe in gunky fecal matter.

The climax of The Shawshank Redemption sees protagonist Andy Dufresne having to crawl through shit-infested sewer pipes before he's able to get a true taste (and whiff) of freedom, where all of the filth is washed from him during a storm. It's catharsis incarnate for the character, which couldn't readily be replicated with Stranger Things' characters, but I still thought the Duffer brothers might get a kick out of covering some of their longtime stars in fake poop.

At this point, I will blindly assume that the Duffers wanted to put that reference into the show, but Frank Darabont warned them against it. If not that, then I'll assume there's a deleted scene where that was filmed and then removed from the final cut. Otherwise, there's just the idea that I was completely wrong, and we just can't have that.

Closing out the 2025 TV schedule in a huge way, Stranger Things' final season returns with the next three episodes on Thursday, December 25.

Spoilers ahead for the season finale of IT: Welcome to Derry.

Andy Muschietti's pair of IT films are some of the best horror movies in recent memory, so fans like me were hyped when it was revealed he was expanding the world with the prequel show Welcome to Derry. The series, which is streaming with a HBO Max subscription, recently aired its season finale, and actress Taylour Paige got honest about not being happy with her character Charlotte's fate. Let's break it all down.

Welcome to Derry instantly became a HBO show that got the world talking, largely thanks to the grizzly way it murdered a group of kids in the first episode. The eight-episode season was full of twists and connections to the movies, including the Hanlon family. They decided to stay in Derry to help protect against Pennywise, and in an interview with Deadline Page shared her honest response, offering:

That was definitely honest. It sounds like Paige is unhappy with the fact that Rose and Leroy decided to stay in the haunted town after all the atrocities they witnessed. While she mentions that the IT's powers make the residents of Derry forget what happens, the Zola actress is still not satisfied with their decision to stick around. After all, most parents would presumably move away and get their kid away from the terrifying dancing clown.

Welcome to Derry's finale offered a number of thrilling connections to Muschietti's movies, including the Hanlon family. Leroy appears as an old man in It, while Mike Hanlon becomes a member of the Loser Club. We also learn that Marge is Richie's mother, and even got a glimpse of Sophia Lillis' Bev Marsh. Later in the same interview, Taylour Paige spoke more about the Hanlons staying in Derry after the show's Season 1 finale, offering:

Points were made. Paige used the time setting of Welcome to Derry to help justify her character's decision at the end of the season. Because even if Charlotte wanted to take her kid and leave town, that was a risky move in the '60s. That, combined with the Hanlon's sense of duty, ultimately resulted in them sticking around Derry in hopes of keeping the fight against Pennywise alive.

There certainly seems like plenty more stories to tell, so I'm hoping the network orders Season 2 sooner rather than later. For now, IT: Welcome to Derry is streaming in its entirety on HBO Max as part of the 2025 TV schedule.

SPOILER WARNING: The following article contains major spoilers for the IT: Welcome To Derry Season 1 finale. If you have not yet watched, take advantage of your HBO subscription and do so immediately!

Over the last two months, IT: Welcome To Derry has provided audiences with not only a constant stream of horrors, but also an unyielding flood of love for Stephen King. Whether it be deep cut ties to the novel on which the series is based, sly connections to the movies that preceded the show, or nods to other stories in the King canon, every single episode has provided fans with a plethora of easter eggs and references to catch. You didn’t really think that the finale would be any different, did you?

Titled “Winter Fire” (which is itself a reference to the poem that Ben Hanscom writes for Bev Marsh in IT), the last episode of IT: Welcome To Derry has aired, and there are a great number of special details to notice. I’ve done my best to catalogue them all as they appear, and I’ll start with one that arrives in the very first scene…

A Mist Of Doom

To begin the episode, a mysterious mist quickly falls over the town of Derry, Maine, and while the icy fog is a result of It being awake outside of its typical hibernation schedule and making a move toward freedom, the look of the weather condition should be reminiscent to any Stephen King fan. I am, of course, referring to the novella “The Mist,” which sees a small Maine town flooded with an eldritch cloud that serves as the atmosphere for an invading army of monsters from another dimension. The connection in IT: Welcome To Derry is purely aesthetic, but one also can’t help but get the impression that the filmmakers knew what they were doing.

Children Locked In A Gym Echoes An Iconic Stephen King Moment

As an absolute horror unfolds on a stage, students gathered in their high school gymnasium rush panickily to the doors, only to find them locked. Am I describing part of a scene from the IT: Welcome To Derry finale or part of an iconic scene from the final act of Carrie? If your answer is, “Both,” you get a prize! When Pennywise successfully traumatizes the lowerclassmen of Derry High School in the episode, the shot of the scared students pounding on the exits feels like it is specifically designed as a nod to the start of Carrie’s revenge rampage at prom – which begins with her telepathically sealing the room so that nobody can escape.

Maturin Root Cures Dick Hallorann

In Episode 5 of IT: Welcome To Derry, the show folded in elements of Doctor Sleep to be a part of Dick Hallorann’s story, as it was introduced that the psychic soldier was taught at a young age to cage the horrible ghosts around him in a mental box. In the finale, he gets a new way to battle back against the horrors, and it’s in the form of a tea made from Maturin root. If that seems somewhat familiar, it’s because it’s the name of the great benevolent turtle who is the nemesis of It. While there is a lot of turtle imagery scattered throughout IT: Welcome To Derry – from the regular presence of Bert The Turtle, to the charm on Lily’s bracelet, to the casing in which one of the pillars was buried – but the finale marks the first time that Maturin is mentioned by name.

Margaret… Tozier!?

There is a line between “Easter Eggs and References” and “Straight Plot Developments” that I do my best not to cross in the writing of these features, and I’ll admit that this entry gets within millimeters of it. That being said, I think it’s still on the side of the former, so I’m going to discuss it anyway! When the action moves to the frozen Penobscot River and Pennywise singles out Marge, he reveals key elements of her future – namely that she will eventually marry a man with the last name “Tozier” and give birth to a son named Richie (who will grow up to kill It). While we knew that the kids were linked to the Losers Club via Will a.k.a. Mike Hanlon’s dad, this adds a whole extra level of connection.

Time Is A Wheel

In IT: Welcome To Derry, the audience really only starts to get a grasp on what It really is. We learn about why it stays beneath the titular town and the origins of its Pennywise form, but there are many bigger things still to learn. The finale offers a fascinating clue into this with the revelation of how It perceives time – which is forward and backward all at once, with its birth and death being indistinguishable. Understanding this, one can’t help but relate it to the oft-repeated phrase in The Dark Tower series that “Ka is a wheel,” which is to say that there is a malleable fate that guides with an invisible hand.

“Beep Beep, Margie!”

If I’m being honest, one of my biggest nitpicks with IT: Chapter One and IT: Chapter Two is the deployment of “Beep beep, Richie.” In Stephen King’s book, members of the Losers Club say this phrase whenever their most ludicrously loquacious friends needs to shut the hell up, but the movies never get it right (Pennywise is the only one to say it in the first movie, and adult Bev says it minus any real context in the second). IT: Welcome To Derry tries a third swing at it, namely as the last words uttered at Marge before It lunges in for the kill… though it still doesn’t really make any sense.

Pennywise Takes An Epic Form

How story developments in IT: Welcome To Derry differ from how things play out in Stephen King’s IT is subject matter for another feature outside of this easter egg and reference collection, but spotlighting one is actually necessary in this case. In Episode 7, It arrives on the scene in Pennywise form to enjoy all of the death and chaos at The Black Spot, but this is a deviation from the source material, which has the evil entity appear as a giant, demonic bird. What’s nice about the finale is that this epic imagery doesn’t go to waste: in its final bid to escape the cage called Derry, the monster desperately tries to fly across the barrier… but it ends up being too late.

Marge’s Eulogy Comes From The Mind Of Eddie Kaspbrak

In discussing the works of Stephen King, fans are quick to point at his brilliant ability to craft complex protagonists and antagonists who find themselves faced with extraordinary circumstances, but rarely does his prose get enough credit: not just a master storyteller, he has a special gift for building intimate worlds and expressing ineffable emotion. One of his great passages in IT, for example, has young Eddie Kaspbrak reflecting on friendship when his pals visit him in the hospital after he breaks his arm:

It’s a remarkable bit of writing, and in IT: Welcome To Derry, it’s the source of Marge’s eulogy at Richie’s funeral.

Dick Starts His Path Towards The Overlook Hotel

If we pin the setting of Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining to its release year, that means that IT: Welcome To Derry Season 1 is set about 18 years prior to Dick Hallorann meeting the Torrance family. That in mind, it would be pretty unbelievable if Dick were to end his story on the show by directly moving on to a gig in Sidewinder, Colorado… but it can be said that events do at the very least point him in that direction. In the final scenes of the finale, Dick mentions that he is going to move to London to take a job as a cook at a hotel, and it will presumably be there that he hones the skills he needs to eventually become the head cook at the Overlook.

The Hanlons Bought The Farm (Literally, Not Figuratively!)

Because IT: Welcome To Derry is a prequel series, it came pre-loaded with some questions about the Hanlons. Audiences first got to meet Leroy Hanlon in IT: Chapter One, where he is introduced as Mike Hanlon’s grandfather living and working on a sheep farm, but how did he end up staying so long in Maine? That answer is delivered in the finale, as while the Hanlons were considering moving far, far away from It’s hunting ground, they instead choose to stay on the outskirts of town and purchase Rose’s land after she decides it’s time to leave Derry. The story ends on what seems like a happy note for Will – though it gets less happy when you think about what ends up happening to him years later.

Mrs. Kersh Meets Bev Marsh

The story of Ingrid Kersh in IT: Welcome To Derry Season 1 is included as a way for the story to link back to the character’s small (and haunting) role in IT: Chapter Two, but if you’re like me, you’ve been asking yourself, “Well, where was she in 1988/1989?” Thankfully, the run doesn’t end without answering that question, and it’s terrific: not only do we learn that Mrs. Kersh was locked up in Juniper Hill for decades, but we also learn that she was present on the traumatic day when Bev Marsh’s mother died (making her interaction with Bev all the more sinister in Chapter Two).

With that, we’ve come to the end of cataloguing all of the easter eggs and references in IT: Welcome To Derry… but we can keep our fingers crossed that this is just the beginning of the end and an announcement about Season 2 will be coming soon.

The end is almost here… or, perhaps, it’s just the end of the beginning? In a few days, IT: Welcome To Derry Season 1 will air its finale on HBO, and there are oh so many questions in the minds of Stephen King fans wondering about where things may go next. There has been much talk surrounding the show about a big picture plan involving future seasons principally set in 1935 and 1908… but will the narrative shift mean that we are leaving behind the characters we’ve met and grown to love in 1962? And what about exploring the Derry, Maine of the not-too-distant future?

I am an unabashed nerd when it comes to timeline questions like these, so I naturally had to ask them earlier this month when I conducted a virtual interview with Jason Fuchs – the IT: Welcome To Derry co-showrunner who is also credited with developing the series alongside Andy and Barbara Muschietti. After last Thursday’s column exploring how Bill Skarsgård was convinced to join the show, this week’s edition of The King Beat explores what we can potentially expect from the future (and I say “potentially” because a renewal has not yet been announced). There’s a whole lot to discuss, so let’s dig in.

Just Because Welcome To Derry Season 1 Is Ending Doesn’t Mean We’re Saying Goodbye To The Main Characters

When I first learned of IT: Welcome To Derry’s aforementioned three-season plan, the impression that I got was to expect something akin to what has been brilliantly executed with the FX series Fargo: it’s all the same continuity, and there are direct connections between each of the five existing runs, but they are also independent narratives that feature their own respective ensembles of protagonists and antagonists.

As I’ve watched the new Stephen King series, however, I’ve questioned if I properly understood the plan. Specifically, I’ve been surprised by the various flashbacks that the show has already offered in multiple episodes, with Episode 6 ("In the Name of the Father") and Episode 7 ("The Black Spot") featuring extended sequences set in 1935 and 1908. These moments in front of mind, I’ve wondered what it could mean for potential flashforwards to 1962 in future seasons.

I explained my thinking to Jason Fuchs, and he confirmed that there isn’t stringent thinking behind the scenes defining the end of Season 1 as the end of our time with the Hanlons, the Grogans, Lilly Bainbridge and Marge Truman. Said the filmmaker,

For those who need a quick refresher course on how things work in the town of Derry, IT is a vicious monster that feasts on fear and particularly loves targeting children, but it has a hibernation cycle of 27 years. In the aftermath of the events of 1962, it will go into a slumber and not wake up until it’s time to feed again in 1989 a.k.a. the setting of the film IT: Chapter One. But just because the yet-to-be-identified survivors of Season 1 won’t have more direct confrontations with Pennywise doesn’t mean their stories won’t be worth further exploring.

Part of the reason why the filmmakers are moving back in time with the plan for IT: Welcome To Derry is because the show is planning to follow up the tale of The Black Spot by exploring other landmark events in the history of the titular town from Stephen King’s novel – specifically the Bradley Gang massacre (which goes down in 1935) and the explosion at Kitchener Ironworks during an Easter Egg hunt (1908). But while those are guideposts of sorts, Jason Fuchs suggests that fans keep their minds open and ready for surprises.

The 20th century is clearly being well explored by IT: Welcome To Derry, and IT: Chapter 2 is primarily set in 2016, but that leads me to another line of inquiry that I broached with the HBO series co-showrunner: what about the future?

Welcome To Derry: 2044?

Is Pennywise really dead? In Stephen King’s IT (and as adapted in IT: Chapter 2), the adult Losers Club seems to kill the trans-dimensional entity… but Constant Readers have been given reason to question whether or not IT is really one. In the 2001 novel Dreamcatcher, a plaque in Derry dedicated to the town’s heroes is besmirched with graffiti that bluntly reads “Pennywise Lives,” and in 2021’s Later, the Deadlights make a shocking return. Since IT was first published in 1986, we have not seen King fully resurrect his most famous monster… but could we perhaps see it happen at some point in the future of IT: Welcome To Derry?

Within the timeline of the IT movies and the HBO series, the next potential appearance from Pennywise would be in the year 2044 (a.k.a. 27 years after 2016). If future seasons of Welcome To Derry feature flashforwards to events post-1962, I don’t think it’s out of bounds for there to also be scenes exploring the town in a time that is now just a little over 18 years away. Jason Fuchs didn’t shut the door on the idea, but he also suggested that it would probably be best to leave Stephen King to potentially tell that story:

Taking into consideration the development of the show, this is an understandable approach. Creative liberties are being taken and big new ideas have been introduced (for example, the actions of Ingrid Kersh, motivated to see the return of her father), but the foundation for everything that we’ve seen in IT: Welcome To Derry is featured in the pages of Stephen King’s book. To explore the year 2044 would be taking a step beyond that foundation and into fresh territory that could perhaps step on King’s toes.

Adding to my mentions of Dreamcatcher and Later, Jason Fuchs noted that Insomnia is another Derry-set story that takes place in the aftermath of the victory of the Losers Club – and he pointed to the fact that the books and the adaptations are on very different timelines (in the book, the adult Losers defeated IT in 1985, so his year of return would have been 2012). For now, Fuchs and his fellow writers are sticking with the exiting source material. He added,

It sounds like the idea of peeking into the future via Welcome To Derry is an extreme longshot, but I will offer this fun bit up as consolation: when I spoke with Jaeden Martell, Finn Wolfhard, Chosen Jacobs, Jeremy Ray Taylor, Jack Dylan Grazer, Wyatt Oleff, and Sophia Lillis during the IT: Chapter Two press day in 2019, I asked if they would perhaps be game to remake the movie in 2044, reprising their original roles, and every single one of them was on-board with the idea. So while the return of Pennywise remains a big maybe (Stephen King is presently busy writing the untitled Talisman 3, which is still awaiting a release date), King fans can hold out hope that project could someday happen.

That brings us to the end of this week’s edition of The King Beat, but I would highly recommend keeping an eye out for my column arriving next Thursday, as I will be following the end of IT: Welcome To Derry Season 1 by publishing my ranking of all six Stephen King adaptations released in 2025. Be on the lookout for that, and to keep up to date with all of the King projects Hollywood presently has in the works, check out our Upcoming Stephen King Movies and TV guide.

Spoilers below for the latest episode of IT: Welcome to Derry, so be warned if you haven't yet watched on HBO or via HBO Max subscription.

When the seventh installment of IT: Welcome to Derry wasn’t busy dropping fun easter eggs or introducing audiences to the “real” Bob Gray, it was breaking my tar-black heart. In the first place, the penultimate episode tackled one of the most controversial mass murders in all of Stephen King’s bibliography: the Black Spot massacre, which resulted in the deaths of multiple soldiers and civilians. But with no disrespect to any of the Black characters who suffered the fatal whims of Clint Bowers, the most heartbreaking death was that of young Rich Santos.

One of the most suave child characters in the history of TV, Rich was a fibbing sweetheart with a fixed crush on Matilda Lawler’s Marge. Unfortunately, once the Black Spot started to burn up, neither was able to find a proper exit, and Rich then came up with the idea for Marge to hide inside a toppled refrigerator to get away from the smoke and the direct heat. A great and honorable idea, but one that ultimately also led to li’l dude’s death by fire. (Or smoke inhalation, most likely.)

It was already going to be sad, just from his obvious moves to sacrifice himself for her survival. But then they went and had that heart-to-heart conversation, where they could hear each other’s every word despite all of the chaotic noise in the background. That part didn’t make much sense, but whenever the words are as sweet as everything Rich told Marge, it’s allowed!

How That Fan Theory About Marge Makes Rich's Death Even More Heartbreaking

For those unaware, quite a few IT: Welcome to Derry fans are holding onto the belief that Marge grows up to take on a different nickname, Maggie, and later becomes the mother of one Richie Tozier. Beyond the first name, this theory ties into the importance of Marge's coke-bottle glasses, which are reminiscent of Richie's.

But where oh where could Marge have come up with such a name? Oh yeah, probably from the li'il dude who kept her safe by lying down atop the fridge's door, making her escape impossible. (While also making his own escape impossible.) What better way to pay tribute to her martyr than by naming her son after him? If that is indeed the case, then it adds a whole new layer on top of Richie's storyline, tying back to his mother's first love.

The HBO series also tied into the two IT films by identifying Madeleine Stowe's character as the mysteryious Mrs. Kersh, whose persona was entirely an IT construct in the second movie.

Of course, this could all be hogwash and just some extremely coincidetal circumstances where Marge is concerned. Until the show sets up that reveal specifically, we'll just have to keep guessing.

IT: Welcome to Derry is set to wrap its Season 1 run on Sunday, December 14, at 9:00 p.m.

People of a certain age are about to feel very old when I write that Stand By Me will turn 40 next year. The coming-of-age film was a major influence for a generation, which may be why the cast isn’t actually waiting for the 40th anniversary to celebrate the film. With that, one of the film's lead actors, Jerry O'Connell celebrated by channeling his character in a major way.

Multiple Stand By Me screenings have already started and are set to continue into 2026. Not only is Jerry O’Connell involved but so are his co-stars, Wil Wheaton, and Corey Feldman. As part of these events, the trio appear on stage to talk about the film after everybody screens it. O’Connell posted a picture to Instagram from a recent show, and he was has dressed up as his character, Vern Tessio. Check him out in all his glory:

Needless to say, fans of Stand Be Me -- some how were at the show, and many who were not -- lost their minds over seeing O’Connell dressed as Vern 40 years after the beloved film's release. The comment section on the image is full of excited comments, including…

• The best reveal!!! You guys were incredible. Thanks for the memories and for being a part of the greatest coming of age Film. - sarah.treiber
• You cosplaying as Vern was not on my bingo card for 2025, but I'TS THE GREATEST [EVER] - shaneiswhyismile
• Man this is just the coolest thing ever. - watchingnewyork
• IT STILL FITS!!!! - therealdudja
• Now do the haircut! - bakingfortheoffice

Stand by Me is the story about the emotional journey of four boys, who journey just outside their small town to track down a dead body. The experience of filming the movie was also emotional for the actors. Unfortunately, Wil Wheaton has discussed the emotional abuse he suffered during production. However, he also made lifelong friends, as Wheaton and Jerry O'Connell are still close.

This 1986 film is generally regarded as one of the best Stephen King adaptations ever put to film. Director Rob Reiner also calls it his favorite film of those he's made. It, like The Shawshank Redemption (which appeared in the same book) isn’t the usual Stephen King story, as it lacks anything supernatural. It’s just a story of friendship among a quartet of friends.

Seeing Jerry O’Connell in that shirt and pants really does bring back a lot of memories. He also apparently brought the comb and the cherry Pez as well, which was a nice touch. Those are references that will mean little if you’re not familiar with Stand by Me, but will mean everything to those who know it well.

It’s great to see these three stars of Stand By Me together again after four decades. Of course, it's also bittersweet, as one member is missing. River Phoenix played the fourth member of the group, and the actor passed away in 1993. Nevertheless, O'Connell and Phoenix's other co-stars have firmly been keeping this film's legacy alive -- and his performance as a result -- which I love to see.

The live tour of Stand by Me has dates on the east and west coast scheduled for March 2026, and tickets are still available for most dates. Those who'd like to watch the film now can also stream it with a Netflix subscription.

Spoilers below for everything we’ve seen so far in IT: Welcome to Derry Season 1, so be warned if you haven’t been watching on HBO or streaming via HBO Max subscription.

The back half of IT: Welcome to Derry’s first season has changed up audiences’ previous understanding of Stephen King’s Clown Prince of Evil, while adding further context to the two big-screen features from Andy Muschietti. Bill Skarsgård’s return to Derry wasn’t just about reprising the role of Pennywise, as he also brought the long-mysterious entity “Bob Gray” to life for the first time in Episode 7, expanding IT’s origin story to the point when Pennywise first entered the picture. (Not that there aren’t still questions.)

Bringing such massive changes to this iconic and beloved narrative universe wasn’t a task that the co-creators and showrunners took lightly, knowing that there was potentially more risk than reward in such an act. But IT: Welcome to Derry is all about building upon what already existed, and the creative team was lucky enough to have the progenitor himself, Stephen King, as a litmus test springboard for their ideas. Speaking to ScreenRant, co-showrunner Jason Fuchs talked about the major plus of having the legendary author as a welcoming muse, saying:

Hearing that, I would generally LOVE to know what some of the ideas might have been that would make Stephen King balk and shake his head to the point of it spinning right off of his shoulders. I wonder if there even is an adaptation idea so godawful that he would shut it down right on the spot: "What if we paired Pennywise up with Nickelback and a Quarter-pounder?"

Even with King's support and guidance, Fuchs & Co. were still dealing with a rather bizarre issue stemming out of the sequel IT: Chapter Two, where it wasn't entirely clear how much of Mrs. Kersh's conversation with Bev was pure batshit, and how much of it could actually have been sourced in reality. Here's how he explained it:

Episode 7 did indeed confirm that Bob Gray was a cig-smoking widow performing for carnival crowds with his daughter Ingrid, whose apparent dream was to become the doting on-stage partner her mother was under the moniker Periwinkle. One night, Bob is approached by the form of a young boy, and is swayed into following the boy into the woods, never to return in human form again. Tragically enough, Ingrid spent the next 54 years waiting to see him again, only to finally discover that she'd been wrong all this time.

While we don't necessarily see yet how Bob Gray gets taken over, or how IT originally took over the child, Jason Fuchs did speak to the overall inspiration behind why the in-costume Pennywise was chosen as the next human vessel. As he put it:

It's an interesting point, even if I think seeing a clown smoking out of character would be bothersome enough to make a kid NOT want to walk up to him. But I guess this isn't a normal kid we're talking about.

Now that we've gone back to the time when Pennywise and IT first crossed paths, I can't wait to see what the creative team has in store for the upcoming finale, which could very well turn into my favorite thing on the 2025 TV schedule. Will it set up Andy Muschietti's goal for a three-season prequel exploration, or will it feature a more closed-off ending? (Yeah right.)

Find out when IT: Welcome to Derry Season 1 concludes on HBO on Sunday, December 14 at 9:00 p.m.

We are now coming to the end of what has been a stellar year for Stephen King adaptations. A total of six different projects premiered either on the big screen or on television, and they have spanned just about the entire calendar – from Osgood Perkins' The Monkey back in February, to HBO's IT: Welcome To Derry, which will air its Season 1 finale this Sunday. As great as it is to look back at what came out in 2025, however, there is also what seems to be a never-ending flow of new King adaptations in the works, and now joining that list is a project that is being personally developed by Giancarlo Esposito.

The Breaking Bad star has some interesting history with King, as he had a small role in 1986's Maximum Overdrive (the author's notorious directorial debut) and starred in the premiere episode of the anthology series Creepshow (which is based on King's short story "Gray Matter"). Now, according to Deadline, he is working to make a movie based on "The Dreamers" – which happens to be my favorite novella included in the 2024 omnibus You Like It Darker. Esposito says that a deal is presently being finalized to make the adaptation, and he collaborating with screenwriter Guy Busick, with whom he had the chance to work on the 2024 horror movie Abigail.

Easily the scariest story in Stephen King's most recent collection of short stories, "The Dreamers" is about a skilled transcriptionist who lands a gig working for an eccentric scientist in the town of Castle Rock, Maine. His employer is working to discover what exists beneath dreams, and experiments see test subjects given a hypnotic drug before studying a picture of a house built in a forest, which they are told to mentally explore. The tests at first result in strange happenings, but before too long, it escalates to full-on Lovecraftian nightmare.

Some of the imagery in the book is deeply shocking, and I am beyond excited to see them brought to life on the big screen. Horror fans should keep their fingers tightly crossed for this one.

In addition to co-writing the aforementioned Abigail, Guy Busick is best known for being part of the writing teams that brought us Ready Or Not, 2022's Scream, Scream VI and Final Destination: Bloodlines. Like Giancarlo Esposito, however, he also has his own past with Stephen King, as he was a writer/story editor on Season 2 of the Hulu original series Castle Rock. His upcoming projects include both Scream 7 (which will be released in February 2026) and Ready Or Not: Here I Come (April 2026).

As far as upcoming Stephen King projects are concerned, the only one presently expected to be released next year is Mike Flanagan's Carrie series for Amazon Prime Video... but things can develop quickly in Hollywood, and we'll have to wait and see if that changes. Stay tuned for more news here on CinemaBlend about developing King movies, TV shows, and limited series – which will hopefully include updates about The Dreamers.

For the last seven weeks, HBO has delivered a constant stream of terror… and if you’re a Stephen King fan, I’m willing to bet that you’ve been in heaven. IT: Welcome To Derry has not only featured wide varieties of blood-soaked horror, but it has served as a brilliant expansion of the canon from IT: Chapter One and IT: Chapter Two, and every episode has featured fun nods to the wider King universe. It was true with the pilot all the way back in late September, and it remains true with the arrival of Episode 7, titled “The Black Spot.”

As is typically the case with penultimate episodes, the latest chapter of the HBO series features some major developments for the big picture story, but it is also loaded up with a number of easter eggs and references – both tying the show back to its source material in special ways and nodding to the larger King canon. Ordering them as they appear, I’ve collected a list of them all for your perusal below:

A Cameo From One Of IT: Welcome To Derry's Co-Creators

Cameos are always fun to spot while on an easter egg hunt, and “The Black Spot” offers one up in its early minutes. Shortly after Pennywise The Dancing Clown has taken his on-stage bow in the 1908 flashback that serves as the episode’s cold open, an organ grinder can be spotted just alongside the crowd of kids watching the show. He’s wearing a black vest and smoking a cigarillo, and if he looks familiar, that’s because it’s none other than Andy Muschietti: the director and producer of the IT movies and one of the co-creators of IT: Welcome To Derry. It would have perhaps been too on the nose if the show were to feature him as the director of Pennywise’s performance, but fittingly, he is the one who starts playing the music that kicks off…

The Pennywise Dance!

If I had to pick any particular moment from IT: Chapter One that could fit under the heading “controversial,” it would probably be the dance performed by Pennywise when it has Bev Marsh trapped in the cistern. On the one hand, I can see the argument that it’s a touch too silly, while on the other, I also enjoy it as a showcase of just how demented the villain is. In “The Black Spot,” however, the dance gets a little more depth, as we learn that it was a part of the act that was performed by the real Pennywise The Dancing Clown before IT hijacked his image for its own nefarious purposes.

The End Of Bob Gray

One of the unexpected stories explored in IT: Welcome To Derry is the story of Mrs. Kersh – who movie-fans first got to meet in IT: Chapter Two. In that film, she introduced the idea that her father had been a clown, setting up the story of how IT came to take on the visage of Pennywise, and “The Black Spot” features that particular chapter of this epic tale unfolding. During the cold open, we never actually hear anyone refer to the carnival performer by his real name, but when Ingrid is shown the bloody handkerchief that belonged to her father and was found in the woods, we see that it is embroidered with the letters “R.G.” These are clearly the initials of Robert Gray a.k.a. Bob Gray, which is one of the names that Pennywise identifies himself as in Stephen King’s book. (Fun fact: it’s also the part of the story that made Bill Skarsgård say “yes” to being in the show.)

Monsters! (In Mask Form)

IT: Chapter One and IT: Chapter Two are, overall, movies that are very faithful to their source material… but there are certain elements that didn’t make it into the twin blockbusters. Fortunately, one of the cool things about IT: Welcome To Derry is that there is an opportunity to adapt certain things for the show that didn’t make it into the movies. A few weeks ago, we saw this happen with the introduction of the slingshot in Episode 3, and we’re seeing it again in “The Black Spot” via the masks worn by former Chief Bowers and his cronies. In Stephen King’s book, It takes the form of a number of classic Universal Monsters – including Dracula, Frankenstein’s monster, and the werewolf – and the looks of those creatures is represented in vacuum-formed plastic in Episode 7.

A Familiar Demand From A Threatening Force

Next, we come to what is my favorite easter egg in “The Black Spot.” When Bowers and his collection of cretins storm into the episode’s titular structure, looking for Hank Grogan, they state the rules of engagement succinctly: "Give us what we want, and we go away." This may seem like a pretty general sentiment, but I’m willing to bet that it perked the ears of every hardcore Stephen King fan watching. Why? Because it’s basically a pluralized version of the repeated demand made by the evil André Linoge to the people of Little Tall Island in the 1999 miniseries Storm Of The Century. Before making his purpose clear, he simply sends out the message "Give me what I want, and I'll go away," and I have zero doubt that IT: Welcome To Derry is referencing that bit of televised brilliance.

A Memorable Ghost

Dick Hallorann has his first big hero moment in “The Black Spot,” as he is able to help Hank, Ronnie, and Will to safety during the blaze… but it comes at a serious cost. By engaging with the ghosts he sees because of his ability to Shine, they all start to engage with him, and that’s a terrifying circumstance that It is all too happy to exploit. While confronting Dick in the fire, the evil clown collects a number of freaky ghosts at his back to haunt him, and one in particular is very memorable – mostly because it doesn’t have a head. What makes it notable in addition to being memorable, though, is that it appears to be the exact same headless ghost that attacks Ben Hanscom in IT: Chapter One when he is doing research in the Derry Public Library.

Can A Fridge Earn Redemption?

I have a very limited number of gripes when it comes to IT: Chapter One (a film I view as one of the greatest Stephen King movies of all time), but one of them concerns the death of Patrick Hockstetter. In the adaptation, the savage bully is simply killed by Pennywise while roaming the sewers looking for Ben Hanscom, but his death in the book is one of my favorites: he opens a fridge in a junkyard – one he has been using to torture animals – and he gets attacked by a swarm of flying leeches. The appliance is a terrifying source of death in the novel… but I kind of love that it gets a bit of redemption in IT: Welcome To Derry. Instead of being used to kill someone, it’s used as a way of saving someone’s life, as Rich has Marge hide in a turned over refrigerator so that she can survive the blaze of The Black Spot.

That’s the end of the list… and we’ve almost reached the end of IT: Welcome To Derry Season 1! “The Black Spot” being the penultimate episode of the hit HBO series means that we are now just seven days away from the finale. What will happen now that the “gate” has been opened for It and the monster has awoken from its hibernation? Be sure to head back here to CinemaBlend next week for our full coverage of everything that goes down.

SPOILER WARNING: The following article contains spoilers for the first six episodes of IT: Welcome To Derry. If you have not yet watched, do yourself a favor and take advantage of your HBO Max subscription before proceeding!

Reflecting on the constant demand for instant gratification in 21st century society, the HBO series IT: Welcome To Derry executed a big gamble in its on-going first season. While fans around the world hungered for the return of Bill Skarsgård as Pennywise The Dancing Clown, the show held off on showcasing its titular entity’s most notorious form until the fifth episode of its eight episode run… which resulted in a fair amount of frustrated chatter on social media. The reason for this approach has been the subject of much discussion, with filmmakers in interviews putting a strong emphasis on exploring IT’s shapeshifting abilities, but the true explanation at the end of the day is that it required some real convincing in order to get Skarsgård to reprise his most beloved character.

So, what was it that eventually led the acclaimed actor to say yes to IT: Welcome To Derry? Answering that question is the main subject of this edition of The King Beat, and it comes courtesy of an in-depth conversation I had this week with series co-creator/co-showrunner Jason Fuchs. The series went through a great deal of development before Skarsgård was a firm “yes,” and he was ultimately attracted to two key opportunities. There’s a whole lot to discuss, so let’s dig in!

IT: Welcome To Derry’s Creators Always Understood That The Show Wouldn’t Work Without Bill Skarsgård As Pennywise

It was about three years ago that IT: Welcome To Derry began to get its feet under it, with showrunners officially hired in November 2022 and the show getting the green light from HBO Max in March 2023… but it was around that same time that doubt was sewn regarding the chance of seeing Bill Skarsgård return as Pennywise. The actor was asked at the time if he was involved with the project, and his comment was very non-committal – simply saying that he was anticipating seeing what the creatives came up with.

Writing about those comments at the time, I penned a headline expressing my worry about what his lack of involvement meant for the prospects of the show… and I was certainly far from alone in that concern. Creatives behind the project – including co-creators Andy and Barbara Muschietti – understood how incredibly vital it was to have him involved, and that meant telling a story that spoke to him as an ever-evolving artist. Jason Fuchs explained,

Career-wise, Bill Skarsgård is in what appears to be a comfortable place (at present, he is less than a year removed from his widely acclaimed turn as the eponymous monster in writer/director Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu), and that put him in a place to have strong artistic integrity in negotiations regarding IT: Welcome To Derry: If the series wasn’t going to give him anything new to explore as Pennywise beyond what he had already done in IT: Chapter One and IT: Chapter Two, he wasn’t particularly interested in signing on.

As Jason Fuchs noted, it was a circumstance that bred a creative challenge for him, co-showrunner Brad Caleb Kane, the producers and the writer’s room. It was firmly understood that the project couldn’t properly exist if it didn’t have the canon’s most exciting character, and thus, there was a very specific goal in the work developing the series:

Fortunately, the creatives had an ace up their sleeve: the identity of Bob Gray.

We’ll Soon Meet Bob Gray In IT: Welcome To Derry, And He Was Key In Selling Bill Skarsgård On The Show

In the actual text of Stephen King’s IT, the identity of Bob Gray is a bit of a mystery. The name is mentioned four times in the book, with Pennywise twice identifying himself with that moniker and Mrs. Kersh explaining that he was her father as she has tea with the adult Beverly Marsh. In the making of IT: Welcome To Derry Season 1, that vagueness was not only used as a creative opportunity, but one that helped convince Bill Skarsgård to sign on.

I asked Jason Fuchs what it was that turned the actor’s “maybe” into a “yes,” and he highlighted revelations about Bob Gray as a key part of the decision:

Audiences previously got to see Bob Gray very briefly in IT: Chapter Two, as Jessica Chastain’s Bev Marsh has a vision of him applying his clown makeup while revising her childhood home, but it’s in IT: Welcome To Derry Episode 6 ("In the Name of the Father") that we start to see more of Pennywise’s “human” side. The show unleashes a bloody twist involving Madeleine Stowe's Ingrid Kersh, who has spent decades acting as a sort of familiar to Pennywise so that she can reunite with her lost dad, and we’ll see Skarsgård further explore that relationship in the two episodes set to debut in the next couple weeks. Fuchs teased,

But the Pennywise/Periwinkle relationship wasn’t the only one that intrigued the actor.

Beyond The Human Side Of Pennywise, IT Contends With Whole New Prey

IT: Welcome To Derry is a treat for Stephen King fans in that it’s a unique, deep exploration of one of the author’s most beloved works, but it’s also an exciting adaptation in terms of canon connectivity. One of the series’ highlights has been the journey of Chris Chalk’s Dick Hallorann, a character who cameos in the book and has been shown to have a rocky relationship with the psychic curse/gift known as The Shining years before becoming the head cook at the Overlook Hotel. It’s a special aspect of the show – and notably, it’s another element that particularly intrigued Bill Skarsgård convinced him to sign on.

IT feasts on fear and is accustomed to prey that is generally helpless to stop it, but the supernatural gifts that Dick possesses make him an exceptional foil. We first got a taste of their interesting dynamic in Episode 3 ("Now You See It") when the soldier is psychically hunting the evil entity from the skies, and the relationship has only escalated since then. Added Fuchs,

That different dramatic tenor is a big part of the remaining story in IT: Welcome To Derry, and audiences should be very excited for what is on the way. The penultimate episode, "The Black Spot,” will debut on HBO and HBO Max this coming Sunday, December 7, and the finale will air on December 14.

That brings an end to this week’s special edition of The King Beat, but as always, I’ll be back here on CinemaBlend next Thursday with a brand new column exploring the latest happenings in the world of Stephen King.

Spoilers below for anyone who hasn’t yet watched IT: Welcome to Derry’s sixth episode on HBO or via HBO Max subscription, so be warned!

More so than other installments, at least to me, the latest episode of IT: Welcome to Derry kept its spotlight on the myriad relationships between the central kids and adults. From Will’s fractured bond with his father to Lilly’s ill-advised visit to Ingrid Kersh’s abode to Ronnie’s reunion with her in-hiding dad Hank, the generational divides are relevant all the way around. The clear exception would have been Rich getting googly-eyed for Marge’s ocular wounds, but then they partied with soldiers.

This week’s episode also marked another batch of fun-to-spot easter eggs tying back to Stephen King’s iconic novel, the rest of his (dark)towering bibliography, and Andy Muschietti’s own two IT films. So if you haven’t already, check out our fairly comprehensive rundowns of all the interesting and head-scratching references from the previous five episodes, and then read on for all the connective tissue we caught while watching "In the Name of the Father."

King's Characters Suffer A Lot Of Parental Abuse

Not a fun reference/trope to talk about, so we'll TLDR it from the jump. Stephen King's books are filled with both protagonists and antagonists dealing with one form of parental abuse or another. The Losers Club members suffered a spectrum of examples themselves, with Alvin and Beverly Marsh's relationship being particularly revolting.

IT: Welcome to Derry's latest ep puts something of a spin on that issue by having Will take the aggressive stance of verbally striking at his father's still-fresh wound from Russo's death in the sewers. That was absolutely the kind of step-too-far move that kids are prone to take, with Leroy unfortunately rebutting with his hands instead of de-escalating things with his words. It's interesting to think about Will as an adult reflecting on this situation with his own son Mike (or anyone, really) and how that would have affected Mike's feelings about Leroy. Maybe it's just me?

Rich Was In The Webelos

Anything Rich says at this point should be taken with a grain of salt, such are his claims about his relatives' experiences. But he claims to have been part of the Webelos "for a couple of years," indicating he's still part of the Boy Scouts in general. Or that he never successfully earned the badge.

In any case, this isn't so much a direct reference as a general acknowledgment that Stephen King has peppered his written works with characters boasting histories with the Cub Scouts, Webelos and Boy Scouts. (Shout out to Scouting Magazine and its King fan for their non-conclusive rundown of scout-related references.)

Dick Hallorann Actually Explains His Lockbox

After Episode 5 gave viewers a visual depiction of Dick's grandparents and his Shine-protected lockbox through the prism of Pennywise's destructive influence, Chris Chalk's character put it all into words for Leroy, albeit after just waking from a liquor-steeped sleep. In particular, he talks about how his ability, which which stronger than his grandmother's, also cursed him with seeing the dead. When given the advice to effectively block out that part of his brain, he said:

No word on if any of the dead people he saw as a kid were young twin girls seeking out a playmate, but it does imply that the character is about to go through a terrifying situation in the aftermath of everything that's set to go down at the Black Spot.

Derry Canal Days Has Been A Local Tradition For Many Years

Lilly's perusal of Mrs. Kersh's family photo album led to some gigantic reveals and references. The very first photo features Ingrid at Derry Canal Days in 1960, which is a local event notable in both the novel and in Chapter Two. Adrian Mellon and Don Haggerty are leaving the carnival when a group of prejudiced youths beat them and throw Adrian off of a bridge, where he is devoured by Pennywise in the waters below.

The Gray Family Possibly Spent Time In 'Salem's Lot

When Ingrid was 7 or 8 years old, during the summer of 1908, she and her father apparently took a trip to Cumberland County, ME. First, I'm passing judgment on anyone who identifies family trips solely by county. But second, that real-world area is home to the fictional location of Jerusalem's Lot, whose name was famously shortened for the 1975 novel "Salem's Lot. I don't recall any ranches mentioned in the novel, but could easily be forgetting something. And maybe those pics are separate from the others, since Ingrid didn't double-up descriptions in other instances.

Bob Gray/Pennywise Was Apparently A Real Person Before IT Took Over

After already blowing my mind a little by turning Mrs. Kersh from Stephen King's Gingerbread House Witch monster into a real person with a social security number, IT: Welcome to Derry doubled down and confirmed that her father Bob Gray was also a corporeal being who employed a clown persona. (I don't feel comfortable saying it was a fun or popular clown persona.) This reveal was admittedly less of a leap after Episode 5 showed IT taking on the form of Matty, a character that we knew was already real.

It does make me reflect on the IT-possessed family that picked Matty up in the premiere, and whether their friends and other family members know what happened to them.

Another Possible Nod To 'Salem's Lot

During the town meeting (read as: lynch mob) that gathered to discuss less lawful means of searching for the fugitive Hank Grogan, one of the attendees makes this suggestion:

I can't readily assume that he's specifically talking about Robert and Patrick Boone, the two brothers at the heart of the short story "Jerusalem's Lot" published in 1978's Night Shift that delved into the sordid history of the town and its Chapelwaite manor. Considering their importance to that story, and the prior Cumberland Country mention, it's hard to shrug off a "Boone brothers" namecheck as being purely coincidental.

Bonus Possible Easter Egg: McMurtry Portrait Studio

I can't say for sure if this was an intentional nod by the creative team, but I'd think this would be a hat tip to the esteemed Larry McMurtry, an author Stephen King has lauded time and again, and whose standout novel Lonesome Dove has been stated as King's favorite book of all time.

Until next week, Constant Watchers, when it will likely all come crashing down.

Long before Thanksgiving and its Black Friday and Cyber Monday follow-ups arrive, the consumer world is already invested in cheery, snow-covered Christmas vibes. All the smiling reindeer and blinking lights may be antithetical to the general gloom and doom of the horror genre, but that doesn't mean fanatics can't find plenty of ways to take advantage of all the huge sales happening throughout the weekend.

So while waiting for all those upcoming horror movies to hit theaters, and for the small screen to be flush with upcoming horror TV series, I've rounded up some of the best Cyber Monday deals on Amazon for those who love to be creeped out. Not every single here will be a hit for every single fan reading, but I'm pretty sure everyone will find at least one option that appeals.

We're not just talking about films and shows, either, since that's obviously not the only realm where fear runs rampant. However, that does seem like the best place to start. So join me in stepping into the Red Room.

More Cyber Monday Horror Blu-Ray And DVD Deals

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From one form of scripted entertainment to another, let's jump to the immersion-filled world of video games.

More Cyber Monday Horror Video Game Deals

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For those who prefer to read rather than watch or play anything, here are a few more applicable suggestions.

Cyber Monday Horror Novel And Graphic Novel Deals

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Hopefully everyone found something above either for themselves or for a loved one. Because that's what the spirit of horror fandom is all about, which just so happens to coincide with the spirit of Christmas and other holidays. Happy savings!

SPOILER WARNING: The following article contains massive spoilers for The Long Walk. If you have not yet seen the film, proceed at your own risk!

Happy Thanksgiving, fellow Stephen King fans! The fact that it’s Turkey Day means that we are getting very close to the end of the year, but what’s particularly special about 2025 is that the King-related goodies just keep on coming. New episodes of IT: Welcome To Derry are still rolling out weekly on HBO/for people with an HBO Max subscription (with the most recent one finally delivering a phenomenal entrance for Bill Skarsgård’s Pennywise), and this past Tuesday was special because it marked the arrival of The Long Walk on 4K UHD and Blu-ray (currently only available in an excellent slipcased Steelbook, and a must for any Stephen King collection).

More than just the Francis Lawrence-directed adaptation’s debut on physical media in the wake of theatrical and digital releases in recent months, what’s particularly exciting about the new release is that it includes an alternate ending that hasn’t been featured anywhere else. Having purchased a copy of the film personally, I watched the never-before-seen conclusion this week, and in the aftermath, I’m going to use all of this week’s edition of The King Beat to explain why I’m both happy and amazed that it wasn’t used for the theatrical release. There’s a lot to discuss, so let’s dig in!

What Happens In The Long Walk’s Alternate Ending

When I first learned that there was going to be a Long Walk alternate ending featured on the physical media release of the film, my first thought was that it would perhaps be a more faithful adaptation of what’s featured in the book – which is to say that it would have Ray Garraty win but be so despondent and traumatized that he just keeps walking/starts to run. It turns out that I was way off, as what’s featured on the 4K UHD really is best described as an alternate ending to what audiences will remember from the theatrical version.

The scene included in the special features of the disc begins with Ray Garraty (Cooper Hoffman) and Peter McVries (David Jonsson) as the only remaining competitors in The Long Walk, and it’s pouring rain on crowds that have gathered around on both sides of the street to see who will be declared the winner. As in the theatrical cut, Peter stops walking, receiving his second warning in the process, and Ray earns his own second warning urging him to continue. As Peter starts forward again, he fails to notice that his friend has stopped behind him. Soldiers put two rounds in Ray’s chest, and the Major (Mark Hamill) declares Peter the winner after personally shooting Ray square in the forehead with a pistol.

The scene continues to remain unchanged as the Major asks the winner for his big wish, and Peter asks for the carbine rifle of a soldier standing nearby – something he claims he can show to future generations. When he has the gun in hand, he immediately points it at the Major, which earns a nonplussed but “no harm done” reaction.

That’s where things deviate from the Long Walk theatrical cut. Peter says, “This is for Ray,” and it seems like he is going to fulfill his friend’s planned wish from earlier in the movie… but then he doesn’t. Instead, he drops the gun at his side and walks off down the road.

After the scene fades to black, white lines of text in a typewriter-esque font unfurl on the screen, offering an explanation of what happened in the aftermath of The Long Walk:

• "It was an early fall morning, months after Peter McVries won the Long Walk, when the Musketeers’ next of kin – Ginny Garraty, Clementine Olson, and Geraldine Baker – each heard a knock at their door
• When they opened it, no one was there.
• Instead, they each found a large envelope filled with more money than any of them had ever seen.
• These mysterious envelopes kept arriving, month after month, for as long as they could remember.
• And one day not long after the first envelopes arrived, Geraldine Baker received a small parcel.
• Inside was a rosary and cross."

Is it still a dark ending? Sure. But it’s dark in a very, very different way, and almost kind of… happy.

How It’s Different Than What Is Featured In The Theatrical Cut Of The Long Walk

At the center of the difference between the theatrical cut ending and the alternate ending is the choice made by Peter when he has a gun in his hand: in the big screen version, he makes the decision to pull the trigger and kill the Major, and in the home video-released scene, he doesn’t. Both versions have the character walk away in the final seconds, though only the alternate cut gives the character a future – one that allows him to fulfill the promise that he made to all of his fellow Musketeers.

In a way, the alternate ending is what I thought I wanted in the immediate aftermath of first seeing The Long Walk: as I sat in the theater, it felt wrong that the wonderful Peter McVries would betray his peace-inclined nature and follow through on his friend’s wish. As reflected in the pre-title card/end credits text, choosing non-violence would mean that Peter could use his status as a winner to do good things, and it could have left the film with a positive message about rising above anger. One could argue that the character wastes his wish, but the logic tracks.

The problem with this is two-fold: it’s too easy, and it doesn’t match the spirit of the source material. While there is no erasing all of the extreme darkness in The Long Walk, what is featured in the alternate ending is basically the “happiest” possible outcome, and it’s ultimately unfair and unrealistic to Peter as a character to have him make a proper moral choice in the aftermath of enduring all of the horror and trauma of the competition.

What’s truly powerful about the end of The Long Walk is that while Peter makes the wrong choice morally, he doesn’t get the audience’s negative judgment for the action because we understand that he is the terrible result of a broken world. The alternate ending undoes all of that.

I’m Shocked That A Studio Executive Didn’t Demand The Alternate Ending Be In The Theatrical Cut, And It Makes Me More Upset About The Running Man Ending

Specific as it may sound, this has been an interesting past few weeks for discussing the third acts of movies that are based on books written by Stephen King but originally published under his Richard Bachman pseudonym. In addition to analyzing The Long Walk alternate ending, I’m still not over how bad the final scenes are in Edgar Wright’s The Running Man… and I’m actually a bit more upset about the latter now than I was before seeing the former.

When decisions were being made in post-production on The Long Walk, there was a point when the filmmakers and the studio had to decide which version would make it to theaters: the ultra dark version, or the lighter-but-still-pretty-dark version. It was recognized that the ultra dark version, while not typically “Hollywood entertainment,” was more meaningful and impactful, and so that was chosen as the way to go.

Meanwhile, The Running Man decided that it couldn’t commit to Stephen King’s ending despite being a super faithful adaptation otherwise, and so what was delivered to theaters was an ending that eliminates anything and everything even remotely dark from the conclusion of the book so that the hero can have a happily ever after.

I respect that making a direct comparison between the two movies isn’t totally fair: one was developed as a PG-13 fall blockbuster with a nine-figure budget, while the other was made for $20 million and released with an R-rating. With less box office pressure extending from less cost, the Francis Lawrence film had the freedom to take some bigger swings. But when the long, long history of Stephen King adaptations reflects on the two titles minus the industry and development context, what will be found is one movie that committed to its source material and one movie that compromised.

That concludes this special edition of The King Beat (I hope each and every one of you has a very enjoyable Thanksgiving!), but there is never a week that goes by without something interesting or cool happening in the world of Stephen King, and I’ll be back here on CinemaBlend next Thursday with a new column examining the latest developments. For now, you can pick up a copy of The Long Walk 4K UHD Steelbook exclusively from Amazon, watch the latest episode of IT: Welcome To Derry on Sunday at 9pm ET/PT on HBO, and learn about all of the various adaptations in the works with our Upcoming Stephen King Movies and TV guide.

Spoilers below for anyone who hasn’t watched IT: Welcome to Derry’s fifth episode on HBO or via HBO Max subscription, so be warned!

We’re now past the halfway point for IT: Welcome to Derry, so Bill Skarsgärd’s fashionably late arrival as Pennywise was a very welcome treat, even if some fans out there may not have liked waiting quite so long for it. The clown-painted entity showed up in the most fitting of places, and in the most fittingly named episode. But like some of the characters in this ep, I’m getting ahead of myself.

Given that a substantial amount of the runtime went into setting up the military’s mission and the human-puppet plan that Pennywise used to get the kids in the sewer, this particular installment was seemingly not nearly as peppered with easter eggs and callbacks to Stephen King’s works as those that came before. Yet one specific connection to Andy Muschietti’s own Chapter 2 may be the most baffling one yet!

Check Out All The Other IT: Welcome To Derry Easter Eggs We Found

• IT: Welcome To Derry's Premiere Is Full Of Stephen King Easter Eggs, And My Favorite Involves Bathroom Graffiti
• There Are A Whole Bunch Of Cool Easter Eggs In IT: Welcome To Derry Episode 2, And I Love The Super Subtle Shining Detail The Most
• IT: Welcome To Derry Episode 3 Has Lots Of Stephen King Easter Eggs, And I Love That Key Weapon Reveal The Most
• IT: Welcome To Derry Episode 4 Easter Eggs Include More Pennywise Teases And A Huge Origin Story

The 29 Niebolt St. Mission

The house on Niebolt St. was a key location in Stephen King’s novel where some truly freaky moments went down, but the filmmakers expanded its importance for the big screen, with both films’ climaxes involving the house and the well it was built on top of. As revealed in “The Great Swirling Apparatus of Our Planet's Function,” the house’s access to IT’s lair is only one reason it’s important.

The sewers also connect all the tunnels running below the town, which the native children used to go around and bury the star shards keeping IT contained. As we all already know, nothing good happens inside Derry’s sewers, and it’s hard to call this mission a success. But more on that below.

Derry's Tap Water Issues

Okay, so I don’t know if this is 100% related, but given a reveal that comes later in the episode, I going to confidently believe it to be so.

During the meeting that went down before Rose knew what happened to Taniel, elder statesman Joe shared this tidbit about how one of IT’s behavioral patterns plagues the town even the cycles of evil aren’t happening.

I don't really want to think about what that creature would be shedding, and how it would go about revealing itself within the town's water supply, because ew. However, this does perhaps provide context to the scene in IT: Chapter Two when Bev turns her nose at the tea she's served in Mrs. Kersh's apartment. In the novel, Bev was horrifyingly served a cup full of sewer shit. Since the movie didn't note that specifically, I'd like to think the tea was made with IT's discharge-water. Maybe "like" is a strong word...

The Bus To Shawshank State Prison

After getting verbally referenced in prior episodes (and after being shown in the series' trailers), the bus to Shawshank finally makes its foreboding arrival. Shawshank is, of course, the location of one of King's most celebrated non-horror stories and adaptations — Frank Darabont's The Shawshank Redemption — and also comes up in other sections of Stephen King's bibliography.

Had the bus not overturned, leading to Hank Grogan's escape, he potentially could have crossed paths with "Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption" characters Andy Dufresne and Red, with Andy not making his grand escape until 1975. And where did he come out? A sewer pipe. It's all connected, people!

The Government Apparently Has Ways Of Bringing Derry Memories Back

Technically not an easter egg so much as a surprising reveal that seems to counter what we've been told thus far. While King fans don't necessarily have the largest number of test subjects to go from, the idea has plainly been that IT's effect on Derry's children is such that they forget everything about him and surrounding events after leaving town, and only start to get those memories back after returning.

Shaw revealed that he got his memories back due to some kind of government experiment. He wasn't specific, but to me it sounded like he was used in the LSD-loaded operation dubbed MKUltra, and that he regained his memories through some kind of psychotropic therapy. Also, because you'd have to be trippin' on some serious shit to think you can take down IT.

Madeleine Stowe's Ingrid Is Apparently THAT “Mrs. Kersh”

With a lovely smile and sympathy shown for Lilly, Madeleine Stowe's Ingrid hadn't made much of a story impact before Episode 5, and it all makes sense for why we didn't know very much about her. Lilly's housecall revealed that Ingrid is married to Stan Kersh the Butcher, and the name "Mrs. Kersh" is far more important to Stephen King fans than "Ingrid."

In the novel, miniseries and IT: Chapter Two, Beverly visits her childhood home, only to realize that it's currently being inhabited by a "Mrs. Kersh." In all versions, the sweet older woman is revealed to be one of IT's personas, this time feeding on Bev's memories and fear of what might have become of her awful father. In the process, she talks about her "foddah" Bob Grey, who's envisioned as the human iteration of Pennywise.

I may be wrong, but I don't think that Mrs. Kersh was ever substantially proven to be a real person, and she wasn't presented as being any more based in reality than the leper who chased Eddie. So what in the world does this reveal mean? We know Bob Grey's story will come up again in this series, but I did not expect the show to spin Mrs. Kersh from a haunting ghoul into flesh and blood. Mr. Kersh already gives me the creeps, but I don't want to think about Stowe's smiles being entirely nefarious.

Grampa Hallorann And Dick’s Mental Lockbox

Dick Hallorann's history was touched upon in The Shining, but it wasn't until the sequel Doctor Sleep where Stephen King explored the character's childhood, where he shared the shine ability with his grandmother, much to the violent discontent of his grandfather. In that novel, readers learned about how Dick was taught to keep his most important memories and thoughts secured within a mental lockbox that no amount of verbal and physical abuse could unlock.

So it makes perfect sense for IT to surface within Dick's brain as his belt-swinging gramps, who's able to get past the lock without a whole lot of struggling, much to Dick's chagrin and agony. We know that he can see dead people know after he saw the cloudy-eyed Russo, but what else did unlocking that box set free?

Pennywise Gets His Glorious Shapeshifting Entrance

Bully on everyone who thought it was safe to put trust into the previous missing kid who showed back up out of nowhere without taking a bath, because that stinky ass child turned out to be Pennywise in penny-disguise all along, the jerk. Having lured all the kids down in the tunnels at the same time as Shaw's squad, Pennywise finally emerged from the shadows. Or in this case, from within the body of a smelly kid. (R.I.P. Matty.)

It was a very cool reveal, with Matty-turned-clown twirling around and singing a haunting ditty as his body flipped inside out, wrapping in a very "Ta-daaaaa" way. I loved the sheer panic on Matilda Lawler's face as Marge, which was reminicent of Eddie's hysterical reactions in IT: Chapter One. (Which this theory can speak to.)

Unfortunately, though we can assume that IT's Uncle Sam ghoul took out those two soldiers, Pennywise itself didn't get to do very much after that tuneful arrival. Most of the kids got away without issue, with Lilly the only one to stumble and get left behind. But she thankfully ended up right behind the spot where Rose's star shard was dropped as Taniel ran away from gunshots.

The shard stopped Pennywise in his gaping-mouthed tracks, and even though Lilly remained freaked the hell out, the threat was forced to twitchingly retreat back into the darkness, unable to cross the boundary made by the shard. That one instance makes Shaw's containment plan seem feasible, but Rose knows way more than he does about all of this.

Join us in tracking all the easter eggs in next week's episode when it hits HBO and HBO Max on Sunday, November 30, at 9:00 p.m. ET.

SPOILER WARNING: The following feature contains spoilers for both The Running Man and the latest episode of IT: Welcome To Derry. If you have not yet seen one or either, proceed with caution!

It feels like it was just yesterday that I was writing editions of The King Beat anticipating all six Stephen King adaptations set to be released in 2025, but the reality is that we are almost at the end of a very awesome year for Constant Readers. With Edgar Wright’s The Running Man in theaters, the last King movie of the year has arrived, and with Episode 5 of IT: Welcome To Derry premiering on Sunday, we will be more than halfway through the last King TV series of the year. But before I get too ahead of myself regarding the latter, I want to focus on Episode 4 of the HBO series and the scariest, freakiest scene on the show thus far.

This week’s lead King Beat story features quotes from my interview with Matilda Lawler, who plays Marge Truman on IT: Welcome To Derry, but it’s not the only headline from this week in the world of Stephen King, as there are also comments from Steven de Souza (writer of 1987’s The Running Man adaptation) about the controversial ending of the new Edgar Wright movie and some exciting home video news. There’s a lot to discuss, so let’s dig in!

The IT: Welcome To Derry Eye Worm Scene Freaked Me Out, But Matilda Lawler Has A Lovely Behind The Scenes Story About It

IT: Welcome To Derry really went the extra mile to set up the spotlight nightmare in Episode 4, "The Great Swirling Apparatus of Our Planet's Function." In addition to featuring a classroom lecture about parasitic flatworms, viewers paying attention will remember Marge’s concern about the size of her eyes in the show’s pilot. Add the two together and you get some sincerely nasty business – with worm stalks growing out of the girl’s eyes and her desperation to be rid of them leading her to the high school’s wood shop class.

It’s arguably the most horrible thing that we’ve seen yet in the HBO show, and so I felt compelled to ask Matilda Lawler about filming it when I spoke with her late last month. In the same virtual interview when I asked Amanda Christine about “The Mother Thing” and Clara Stack about the pickle jar nightmare in episode two, I inquired about the experience shooting the worm eyes sequence. Lawler started by noting that IT’s choice of terror really couldn’t have been more perfect, as Marge is a character with a specific insecurity:

Her eyes may look magnified thanks to her coke bottle lenses, but that’s nothing compared to her ocular cavities bulging out like infected snail eye stalks. It’s a great showcase of IT’s special brand of cruelty.

As for what went into filming the scene, it should be noted that it wasn’t all CGI, and that there were multiple special effects rigs involved. Lawler was happy to be a part of the special cinema magic… but there were some consequences:

Fortunately, Matilda Lawler had a very chivalrous co-star in Arian S. Cartaya, who plays the motormouthed Rich Santos on the show. There have been hints that Rich has a hardcore and unspoken crush on Margot, and one might say that the actor channeled a bit of that affection when he saw that Lawler was having a bit of trouble navigating the set. She continued,

"The Great Swirling Apparatus of Our Planet's Function" is another great episode of IT: Welcome To Derry… but what if I were to tell you that of the five episodes of the show I’ve seen so far, Episode 5 is the best? I can’t say much more about it right now, but everyone should most definitely tune in as soon as it arrives in order to avoid spoilers. “Niebolt Street” will air this Sunday, November 23 at 9pm ET/PT on HBO, and it will be made available to stream instantly at that time for HBO Max subscribers.

1987’s The Running Man Screenwriter Sympathizes With The Remake’s Struggle To Execute Stephen King’s Ending

Last week’s edition of The King Beat was headlined “The Running Man Massively Changes The Ending Of Stephen King's Story, And WTF Was That?” so I wouldn’t say that I’ve been particularly subtle when it comes to my feelings regarding the ending of Edgar Wright’s The Running Man. I love the conclusion of Stephen King’s 1982 novel in large part because of its intense bleakness (a specialty of the books King wrote under his Richard Bachman pseudonym), and I feel like the new adaptation betrays the spirit of the text. It’s now guaranteed to be a source of controversy among King fans forever – but one person who can sympathize with the creatives behind the film is the guy who wrote the screenplay for the original adaptation from 1987.

Steven de Souza, whose credits also include 48 Hrs. and Die Hard, can relate to the challenge of bringing The Running Man to the big screen (a big roadblock for him was the project being setup as an Arnold Schwarzenegger vehicle), and he recently explained in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter that he understands why screenwriters Edgar Wright and Michael Bacall had trouble with the story’s ending. He noted that he has seen the negative response to the conclusion of the 2025 movie, and he thinks that it was an approach that worked better on the page:

In the ending of the book, hero Ben Richards is devastated to learn that his wife and child have been killed while he has been a contestant on The Running Man, and in an act of blind rage, he steers and airplane into the Network’s skyscraper headquarters. Much like the 1987 movie, Edgar Wright’s new adaptation opts for a happy ending, with the hero managing to both get vengeance and survive. De Souza recognizes the challenges of making a film with both a dark ending and a big budget, but he hopes that somebody will get it right someday:

I’ll keep my fingers crossed, but if I’m being totally honest, I’m not all that optimistic.

At Long Last, The Life Of Chuck Has A Streaming Debut Date, And 1408 Is Getting A 4K UHD Upgrade

To wrap up this week’s edition of The King Beat, there are two fun bits of news to share on the home video front. Following its theatrical release this summer, Mike Flanagan’s The Life Of Chuck is finally set to make its streaming debut, and for all of you physical media collectors, you should know that an upgrade of Mikael Håfström’s 1408 is on the way.

The Life Of Chuck has been available to watch via digital rental/purchase for months, and the 4K UHD and Blu-ray came out earlier in the fall, but those of you who have been waiting for it to stream just have to be patient for a few more weeks. Disney has announced the streaming release schedule for next month, and the new Mike Flanagan film will be available to watch with a Hulu subscription starting Friday December 26.

As for 1408, the underrated 2007 film starring John Cusack has been available to purchase on Blu-ray for years now, but the movie will be getting a 4K UHD upgrade at the start of next year. Even better: Lionsgate is releasing it in an awesome Steelbook featuring some terrific original art. Pre-orders are up on Amazon in advance of its scheduled January 13 street date.

That brings an end to this week’s edition of The King Beat, but don’t fret! Just because next Thursday is Thanksgiving doesn’t mean that I won’t still be on to bring you a fresh column so that you can learn about all of the latest goings-on in the world of Stephen King. In the meantime, you can discover all of King’s various in-the-works projects with our Upcoming Stephen King Movies and TV guide.

While Paramount must have had hopes for The Running Man to be a big blockbuster, the movie failed to perform in its opening weekend. The Glen Powell-led action thriller had a disappointing global debut of $28 million against a reported $110 million budget, meaning it will likely go down as one of this year’s flops. Amidst these figures, the original The Running Man screenwriter shared one aspect of the release he thinks might have contributed to this result.

Steven E. de Souza, who wrote the script for the 1987 adaptation starring Arnold Schwarzenegger (which wasn’t exactly a money-maker either), shared his thoughts to The Hollywood Reporter about its box office performance. Here’s one thing he noted in the interview:

The box office winner of this past weekend was Now You See Me: Now You Don’t, which opened to $75.5 million worldwide. Per Variety, one thing that particularly edged the sequel over The Running Man is the fact that over 50% of ticket holders were women, whereas the Stephen King remake was led by 63% men.

So The Running Man didn’t end up appealing to women as much as men. However, there’s definitely other factors to consider that led to The Running Man tumbling commercially. For one, it’s rated R, which lowered the margin of younger audiences able to attend screenings. Another is its mixed reception from critics – including through CinemaBlend's The Running Man review, which gave it 3.5 out of 5 stars. Our own Eric Eisenberg cited feelings of being “disappointed” especially for what it changes from the source material’s ending.

Steven E. de Souza commented on the new Running Man finale, which he felt was “working” on paper when he had read the new script done by Michael Bacall and Edgar Wright. Given the response, he said “something went wrong between the page and the stage again,” and suggests that “maybe the third version in 2045 will stick the landing.” He also said this:

For comparison’s sake, the first film adaptation of The Running Man ended up making $38 million total ($109 million today) against a $27 million budget, making it the 30th highest grossing movie of the year. It’s looking like the original might end up being the more profitable of the two, but we’ll have to see how it does.

Can it make back some of its money as more 2025 movie releases like Wicked: For Good comes to theaters this weekend? We’ll have to wait and see, but Box Office Pro is reporting The Running Man will move down from No. 2 to No. 3, meaning the movie will very likely keep its "flop" title.

Spoilers below for anyone who hasn’t yet watched IT: Welcome to Derry’s latest episode on HBO or via HBO Max subscription, so be warned!

While IT: Welcome to Derry obviously exists squarely within the horror genre and isn’t readily analogous with mystery fiction, the HBO series does have its share of questions that need answers, and the showrunners are happy to fill this detailed world with clues for Stephen King devotees to gnaw on while waiting for Bill Skarsgård’s Pennywise to rear his painted head. And it seems as if one huge and vital connection between the TV and movies’ timelines may have been staring us smack dab in the face all along.

The premiere episode introduced a slew of Derry’s younger residents, but only one who both avoided being killed off and (has so far) avoided joining the main protagonist group: Matilda Lawler’s popularity-minded Marge. Due to her split focus, Marge’s story hasn’t been put under the microscope just yet, though it seems like crossing paths with IT’s evil influences will set her straight. But comments made by director and EP Andy Muschietti hint at Marge being a major piece of narrative connective tissue.

SPOILER THEORY: Marge Grows Up To Become Richie's Mother Maggie Tozier

In Episode 4, Marge's well-being took a downward turn once IT's influence entered her mind and fueled her fears, causing the teen to believe her eyeballs were bulging out of her head, recalling the class video about parasitic flatworms. She'll soon be rocking an eyepatch, as shown in the trailer for the back half of the season, and Andy Muschietti told TVLine that the character's eyes remain a key part of her story. In his words:

Stop. The. Presses. I can't fully recall the last time I've heard the phrase "Coke bottle glasses" out in the wild and not in relation to something set 50. years prior. But it is 100% applicable when referring to Richie Tozier's eyeglasses. Which speaks to the idea that poor eyesight might be a genetic issue for one side of Richie's bloodline. Not that it's impossible to believe two different people in Derry, Maine sport thicker-than-usual lens in their glasses, but it's still pretty specific.

Plus, there's the forehead-smacking obviousness that Marge, like Maggie, is a nickname for Margaret. If it's truly a complete coincidence that Matilda Lawler's character boasts two Richie-specific connections without any parentage reveals, I'll spend a night in the Neibolt House all alone. Where I'll no doubt wonder how I didn't realize these connections before now.

Why This Marge/Maggie Tozier Theory Might Not Play Out?

To be sure, Maggie Tozier and hubby Wentworth were not major players in the novel, and she certainly isn't the most important Margaret in Stephen King's oeuvre, as that prize goes to Carrie White's mother. So if Marge does get a final-episode reveal that she's related to Richie, then...what? Will that actually change anything we already know, or add more value to the movies?

I can't automatically say yes, but that factor would rely entirely on what Muschietti & Co. have planned for the finale, where the importance of Marge's glasses will be made clear. I don't imagine anything truly bonkers will happen, such as Pennywise getting Marge pregnant in college or something. (Although now that's all I'm hoping for.)

Plus, when we see Maggie Tozier in the movie, she doesn't appear to have any scarring around her eyes, which will presumably be the case for Marge after her incident. That's not entirely proof against, since Marge's existence probably wasn't on anyone's minds at the time the movies were filmed. But it doesn't help, either.

Our Rundowns Of IT: Welcomd To Derry's Episodic Easter Eggs

1. IT: Welcome To Derry's Premiere Is Full Of Stephen King Easter Eggs, And My Favorite Involves Bathroom Graffiti
2. There Are A Whole Bunch Of Cool Easter Eggs In IT: Welcome To Derry Episode 2, And I Love The Super Subtle Shining Detail The Most
3. IT: Welcome To Derry Episode 3 Has Lots Of Stephen King Easter Eggs, And I Love That Key Weapon Reveal The Most
4. IT: Welcome To Derry Episode 4 Easter Eggs Include More Pennywise Teases And A Huge Origin Story

Whatever ends up happening, here's hoping Marge can avoid any and all Three Stooges-esque eye pokes, clowns with lemon juice-squirting flowers, and major dust storms.

IT: Welcome to Derry airs Sunday nights on HBO at 9:00 p.m., with episodes available to stream simultaneously on HBO Max.

With the latest Stephen King screen adaptation, The Running Man, coming out over the weekend, there’s been plenty of discourse about it. Of course, critics have weighed in on the movie, along with our own Running Man review of the present day version, but that isn’t all. Among the headlines attached to the 2025 movie schedule entry is an unexpected twist fit for both of the involved creatives. Surprisingly, the new film’s director, Edgar Wright, and King are pen pals and have been for a while.

Ahead of the release, Wright spoke with THR about the modern Glen Powell-led flick. Highlights included, beyond the unexpected Kardashians nod, just how deep his friendship and fandom for Stephen King is, including their special correspondence. Wright wound the clock back just over two decades to reveal his first interaction with the prolific author was related to his A+ blurb of Shaun of the Dead. The film director shared of the even more shocking bit:

The backstory on this surprise Hollywood bingo card moment of the year runs much deeper than I anticipated! While Stephen King's influence on Wright's movies has been no secret, I’m so pleased to learn about their bond. I can only imagine what a surreal moment it was back then to have such an icon’s blessing on one of his first projects. But that’s only just the beginning of the fun.

Edgar Wright went on to say that the first contact parlayed itself into an electronic snail mail friendship. Over the years, they’d chat about their projects, with Stephen King being complimentary of each new flick post-Shaun of the Dead. But as Wright shared, it was more of a personal line of connection, saying:

I’m so thrilled to have gotten this BTS nugget dropped out of thin air. Thinking about Wright and King wishing each other happy birthday and talking about bands like King Gizzard is just really sweet to me. Oh, to be a fly on that electronic thread! It certainly makes me wonder if the 51-year-old’s asking for King's approval of a new ending happened that way.

If you couldn’t guess, I’ll continue to muse about all that’s been chatted about between the two writers. Are there other adaptations or collaborations even between them? There really is so much material. Still, at the end of the day, I’m really so amused to know that Edgar Wright and Stephen King have been the pen pals I didn’t know I needed.

Between it being another Edgar Wright-directed movie and starring recent Hollywood favorite Glen Powell, The Running Man remake has been one of those especially exciting 2025 movie releases throughout the year. Now that it’s arrived and I’ve seen it, there’s one idea that I can’t shake about what could have been for the latest of Stephen King adaptations. SPOILERS are ahead.

I Think The Running Man Could Have Been Even Better As A TV Show

While on one hand I think Edgar Wright’s vision for the movie was absolutely made for the big screen, as I found it to be a fun popcorn movie full of nail-biting action and such, I can’t stop thinking about a missed opportunity that could have elevated the concept. Given that The Running Man is partly a commentary on reality television, and the lengths desperate contestants might go to and TV producers might push for the sake of entertainment value, one predominant thought I have is how it could have thrived even further as a television series.

I think it would have been really clever if The Running Man were a weekly TV show that partially used its reality TV framing to make viewers feel like they are watching the titular series, as Ben Richards is also trying to survive it. It would have been a lot more meta to feel like we’re tuning into the show … which could be compared to a very twisted and violent take on network shows like Survivor and The Amazing Race.

Some Of My Issues With The Running Man May Have Improved

Overall, I do like the movie as is. I mostly agree with our The Running Man review, which highlights its big changes to the story’s ending. However, the problems I do have with the Glen Powell-led movie could have been improved if The Running Man were a TV show. It’s over two hours, and it felt rushed to me, and I don’t love leaving a theater and feeling like there were too many ideas and not enough time to flesh it out on the big screen.

There are a few threads that I think, if they were explored more, would have made me enjoy The Running Man a lot more. For one, I felt like the movie didn’t do the best job of setting up the stakes of Ben Richards' life. It was briefly suggested that his baby daughter, Kathy, was sick, and he felt desperate enough to try out for the high-stakes competition show, but I didn’t really feel this need from the movie itself.

Also, I really liked what was briefly established between Ben and William H. Macy’s Molie when he helps get him a disguise before revealing that he had planned to get him his next job. I was surprised to see that the only follow-up for his character was him possibly getting tortured without anything more. If this were a TV show, something like this relationship could have had more depth to it, rather than it feeling like Macy was giving basically a nothing cameo-ish role. Oh, and don’t even get me started on the third act! It felt a bit rushed to me.

Anyway, like I alluded to, I think The Running Man works as a movie. I had a blast watching it on the big screen. But watching it made me realize how solid this story would be as a TV show. Hey, maybe someday! Tons of upcoming book adaptations are taking the serial route these days.

Spoilers below for anyone who hasn’t yet watched IT; Welcome to Derry’s latest episode on HBO or via HBO Max subscription.

Just when you thought it was safe to go back to one of the most haunted fictional towns in American horror…wait, why would anyone think it’s safe to return to Derry? For TV audiences, it was all for the experience of watching IT: Welcome to Derry’s humdinger of a fourth episode, which boasts the wacky title “The Great Swirling Apparatus of Our Planet's Function.”

Not quite as jam-packed with easter eggs as past episodes, which is normal once a series finds its own legs a few episodes in, this installment does dig into arguably the most important and most mysterious element of this interconnected narrative universe: the full story behind IT’s arrival on Earth and how its reign of death and evil began. (Granted, it’s all anecdotal, but I’d still like to believe it’s mostly aligned with reality.) So first duck, then cover, then join me in pointing out all the fun references and nods in Episode 4.

IT Compared To Dracula

Following the still magical title sequence, the kids are in the gym talking about their harrowing experience in the cemetery, with Clara Stack's Lilly questioning how similiar IT is to Dracula, at least in the art of forming mirrored reflections.

In Stephen King's novel, Bram Stoker's seminal bloodsucker (by way of Bela Lugosi's portrayal) is indeed one of the forms that the evil entity takes on as a way of scaring Derry's youths. Way more fangs in IT's mouth, though.

Hanlons As Historians

During the same scene, Will notes that the first thing he would do would be to look back and see if other incidents of a similar nature had previously taken place in Derry. Will already knows that history is bound to repeat itself if nothing is changed, but he doesn't yet know just how impossible it will be to change anything about this cursed location. Importantly, though, nothing that happened to him in this context swayed his son from following in those same historian footsteps. Or else the Losers Club might never have been brought back together.

Charlotte’s Derry Herald Has A Standout Edition Number

Shining fans with keen eyesight (or pausing-and-zooming capabilities) may have noticed that the newspaper Charlotte reads through boasts "237" as its edition number. Hope there weren't any stories about women in bathtubs in that one.

The Black Spot’s Location Is Set, And There Is Definitely Darkness Ahead

One of the key incidents that sparked the creation of IT: Welcome to Derry is the horrific tragedy that IT set in motion at the Black Spot, which was ostensibly a safe haven where Black soldiers could go to listen to live music, chow down and take a load off. Its emblazoned fate, at the hands of racists townspeople in the novel, goes on to haunt both Will and Mike throughout their lives.

Interestingly enough, Chris Chalk's Dick Hallorann seems to have an inkling that something isn't quite right about the storage building, but I can't help but think that his overall enthusiasm for getting the location itself is hindering his protective instincts. They probably should have heeded the Keep Out sign.

“You’ll Burn, Too”

Will gets his first up-close-and-personal experience with IT while fly-fishing, tapping into a one of his overarching fears involving his dad's plane getting shot down in Korea. The IT-infused vision twists up one of Pennywise's most repeated quotes from any verison of IT — "You'll float, too" — by having Evil Leroy tell Will that he'll burn. A strange threat to deliver while submerged underwater, but no less freaky.

What's more, Evil Leroy's arrival was prefaced by a clownfish swimming up to Will, and I don't think that was a FInding Nemo nod or its Pixar sequel. After Leroy sees the scratches on Will's arms, throwing his own sense of normalcy into doubt, an ominous red balloon is seen floating over the water.

The Kids Figure Out IT’s Motives

Similar to the way Episode 3 provided some exposition for how memories of Derry fade the more former residents stay outside the town, the fourth episode digs into what actually makes IT tick, and why the creature doesn't seem to have the singular goal of killing all the children off. Granted, fans already know the deal, but it's still an important detail to nail down within the reality of the HBO show, because now they'll have a defense mechanism.

The kids realize that in the same way farmer will overfeed animals before slaughtering them, IT purposefully targets and toys with children in order to stoke and increase their innate levels of fear to the maximum. And that's when he swoops in and takes his big chomp, presumably finding the taste of fear to be downright delectable.

“Mommy's Little Helper”

An interesting and enjoyably controversial detail added into the show is Lilly's idea that her mom's Valium prescription can be utilized to lower each teen's ability to feel fear and nervousness. I can't imagine that'll work superbly, but it's something.

The nickname that Lilly uses was popularized by the 1966 Rollings Stones track "Mother's Little Helpers," but existed in the lexicon before then. King himself has spoken about Valiums being in the mix during the height of his various addictions. The sedative also played a sizable role in one of the author's bestsellers written during that addiction-addled era, The Tommyknockers, when Bobbi attempted to take down Gard by forcing him at gunpoint to choke down a lethal dose.

A Possible Connection To From A Buick 8's Troop D?

The big chalkboads inside Derry PD feature lots of names that are likely meaningless, but one not-so-hugely common surname is Pasternak, which is also the last name of Troop D member Shirley Pasternak within the novel From a Buick 8. That tale took place in Western Pennsylvania, so connecting those dots would take some miles, so it's a good thing we have a dependable non-supernatural vehicle to use.

Tim Flanagan

In Stephen King’s novel, the same surname comes up in a letter from Stan’s mother-in-law Ruth to his wife Patty, in reference to “Stella Flanagan” getting betrothed again. It’d be impossible to connect those characters with just the info we have, though.

Instead, this seems morely likely to be a nod to another famed Stephen King-loving filmmaker, Mike Flanagan, who’s helmed adaptations of Gerald’s Game, Doctor Sleep, The Life of Chuck and the upcoming Carrie TV series. Or maybe one of the showrunners knows a guy named Tim Flanagan.

A Carrie-esque Prank Was Planned For Lilly

Speaking of both Tim Flanagan and Carrie, that character was meant to be hunky bait for Lilly to throw herself at, as part of a mean-spirited prank that Matilda Lawler's Marge was tasked to help facilitate by the Pattycakes. According to Marge, the goal was for Lilly to be humiliated in front of the entire school. I didn't see any buckets of blood hanging from the rafters, but it's the thought that counts, and we all know what happened to those who fucked with Carrie...

Another Clown And Balloon Sighting Outside The Hanlon Home

While I don't share in others' complaints about IT: Welcome to Derry's lack of Pennywise in early episodes, since that was a purposeful decision, I do think Bill Skarsgärd's full-on arrival is imminent, given all of the visual teases sprinkled throughout. (Although I kind of question why, narratively speaking, since no one thus far has shared any underlying fears of clowns for IT to be latching onto.)

In any case, Will's post-nightmare telescoping sesh was disrupted by the sight of Pennywise's shadowed silhouette, similar to what was seen on the photo taken in the crypt. Though Leroy didn't see any such circus folk when he angrily ran outside looking for a confrontation, he did catch site of another red balloon caught in the tree branches. I'm really hoping he connects the dots between that and the fly-fishing incident.

So Many Doors!

Both of Andy Muschietti's IT films featured scenes involving a trio of doors of varying scariness, but the circle of doors that Dick Hallorann pops into while invading Taniel's mind are of a completely different nature. There's no sand on the ground in there, but this location feels comparable to the beach in The Dark Tower II: The Drawing of the Three where Roland encounters the three doors that take him into Eddie Dean, Odetta Holmes and Jack Mort. Not exactly the same, but doors as a pathway to consciousness is the name of the game here.

IT’s Extraterrestrial Backstory

To be sure, Hallorann's Shine-centric exploration of Taniel's memories is less of an easter egg and more of a full extension of the (heavily altered) origin story laid out in IT: Chapter 2's psychedelic scene, in which Bill learned about the Ritual of Chüd. But it's obviously important connective tissue for this universe, so here we are.

Within this reality, IT is also alien in nature, and arrived on earth within a falling star that broke open upon colliding with the ground. The evil spirit was free, but without anything to really feed off of, at least until the first settlers. Once people were prevalent, IT was able to get stronger, and IT's influence inspired fearful natives to contain it within the forest the star crashed into. That plan of course went to shit as soon as greedy white people showed up and strengthened the monster even more.

Eventually, after a young Indigenous girl and her friends shattered the star's remnants into 13 sacred shards, those shards were buried in a giant circle surrounding the forest, with their locations kept secret so that no one would curiously attempt to dig them back up in the future. Of course, Dick Hallorann's talents go beyond such intentions, and now it's clear that the military aims to track down these buried shards for their own purposes. So...good riddance, I guess?

A Special Case For One Star Shard

The 13 shards were said to be "buried deep within the earth," but seemingly only one of the pieces was encased in something before being put into the dirt. Fittingly enough, the shard in question was placed between two turtle shells, which is another direct reference to the Macroverse's most compassionate Guardian of the Beam, Maturin. It's been unclear whether or not IT: Welcome to Derry will tap into that otherworldly realm from Stephen King's novel, but I can't imagine we'd get turtle references in every episode without some kind of payoff.

Did you catch any Episode 4 references that I missed? Let us know, and don't forget new episodes of IT: Welcome to Derry air Sunday nights on HBO at 9:00 p.m. ET.

Spoilers below for The Running Man, so be warned if you haven’t yet watched!

At long last, Edgar Wright’s The Running Man shifted away from being an upcoming Stephen King adaptation and joined the ranks of 2025 movie releases. One’s mileage may vary when it comes to enjoying the action-packed chase flick from beginning to end — here’s what other critics are saying — but when it comes to the director’s love of peppering pop culture references, it’s a winner.

Wright’s love of classic horror movies shows up in spades throughout his and Simon Pegg’s A+ series Spaced, and his first live-action take on a King story features a number of on-screen nods to the author’s career. And not just a softball reference like The Shining’s signature carpet pattern. Given that The Running Man was originally published under the author’s Richard Bachman pseudonym, I was especially pumped that several of the easter eggs were indeed specific to that section of King’s career. Let's dig in (while making sure we aren't digging on old Micmac burial grounds).

Bachman's Restaurant

No better way to give a shout-out to the author's alter ego than to very specifically name-check it. This location appears soon after Ben Richards hits the road after his time starts. You know what I hear, though? The more you eat there, the THINNER you get. Somebody give me a rim shot.

(Also, that joke is not going to work nearly as well if it's revealed Bachman's is a loan office or a vape shop.)

"Stark" And Other Familiar Last Names

When Ben Richards is at the Network and starting the process of auditioning for myriad reality shows, a central locker room/staging area is shown, with a variety of surnames above each hopeful's spot, and the bulk of them were easy to place. (Though I was admittedly clueless about one of them.)

The one worth highlighting earliest, though, is the "Stark" reference, as that alludes to a multi-headed connection to the King-verse. Ostensibly, it's a nod to prolific author Donald Westlake's crime-centric pseudonym Richard Stark, the name behind the Parker novel franchise. The first half of Stephen King's Bachman identity was itself a homage to Westlake's alter ego.

Beyond that, King also homaged the surname via The Dark Half's George Stark, the pen name used by the novel's protagonist that soon transcends from an innocuous fiction to a distinctly evil reality.

Other names shown in the scene are noted below:

• KING - Obviously pointing to the man himself, Larry King. No wait, I mean Stephen King.
• BATES - Kathy Bates is the Oscar-winning actress who headed up Misery as Annie Wilkes, played the titular character in Dolores Claiborne, and made a memorable appearance in The Stand miniseries.
• SPACEK - Sissy Spacek was the O.G. King Scream Queen, having starred as the vengeful teen in Carrie years before making a return to the fold as Ruth Deaver in Castle Rock.
• SHEEN - Before West Wing, Martin Sheen played a less moralistic POTUS for David Cronenberg's The Dead Zone.
• DUVALL - Shelley Duvall is as iconic as anyone in a King adaptation, having suffered Stanley Kubrick's directorial whims as Wendy Torrance opposite Jack Nicholson in The Shining.

Past Contestant Charlie Decker

When The Running Man looks back at a past contestant who seemed like he might go the distance, he's noted as being named Charlie Decker. That's another huge Richard Bachman reference, as Charlie is the dual protagonist and villain of the novel Rage. It's a story that King has since distanced himself from, as it centers on a high school student who shoots his teacher and holds his class hostage. No such padlocks were available to save The Running Man's Charlie from certain doom, however.

Tabby's Sign

Just before fans get to watch the ridiculousness of Glen Powell temporarily trying to convince the world he's a blind priest, the camera passes by a local spot called Tabby's, which is no doubt a reference to Stephen King's significant other, author Tabitha King (née Spruce), whose nickname is indeed Tabby.

Kudos to Edgar Wright and co-screenwriter Michael Bacall for making my easter egg antennae go crazy throughout the movie. For those who read along without actually watching yet, it's in theaters now.

One minor The Running Man SPOILER is ahead.

Glen Powell’s role as Ben Richards in The Running Man marks the second time the Stephen King character has been adapted for film following the 1987 version starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. However, there’s a fun connection between the films to be found in the 2025 movie release in the form of a brief appearance by Schwarzenegger on a $100 bill in the film.. But what does that mean he’s playing exactly?

CinemaBlend found out when we spoke to writer/director Edgar Wright. When Jeff McCobb asked him if Schwarzenegger is playing the president in The Running Man, here’s how the filmmaker responded:

If you missed Arnold Schwarzenegger’s cameo in The Running Man, when the fictional competition series The Running Man is playing, a woman presents a look at the money contestants can earn, and on the bill is Schwarzenegger’s face. Take a look:

Arnold Schwarzenegger was the governor of California from 2003 to 2011, and it even looks like they used his official governor photo on the bill! What a fun little way to pay tribute to his legacy in The Running Man. As Edgar Wright continued in our interview:

As Edgar Wright pointed out, he’s not the first filmmaker to make Schwarzenegger president in a sci-fi movie. It was also done in 1993’s Demolition Man. In that film, which was co-written by Daniel Waters (alongside Robert Reneau and Peter M. Lenkov), it’s mentioned that Arnold Schwarzenegger was the President of the United States after a Constitutional amendment was passed that allowed him to run for the office due to his popularity. The actor wouldn’t be able to run in real life because he was born in Austria.

Along with Schwarzenegger getting a nod in the movie, he also gave his blessing to Glen Powell to star in the film, as well as saw the new movie and give the actor his thoughts on it. (Did you know Powell and Schwarzenegger were both in an Expendables movie together years ago?) Per the new The Running Man star, Schwarzenegger “just kept saying ‘it’s incredible’” after the screening, along with noticing that it was a “very painful movie” for Powell given all the stunts he achieved.

You can check out what critics are saying about it, including our own The Running Man review, and of course see it only in theaters now.

SPOILER WARNING: The following article contains massive spoilers for Edgar Wright’s The Running Man. If you have not yet seen the film, proceed at your own risk!

When it came to Edgar Wright’s decision to make a new adaptation of Stephen King’s The Running Man, faithfulness to the source material was the point. Earlier this year, during a luncheon Q&A at CinemaCon, the writer/director explained that he was a big fan of the book from when he was young, and he was never satisfied with the extremely loose take that was released in 1987, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger (which I’ve previously dubbed “the least-Stephen King Stephen King movie"). He wanted to make a film that better represented King’s original story.

The good news? His new movie is indeed mostly that: practically the entire narrative makes it from the page to the screen, including even the protagonist’s run through the haunted town of Derry, Maine. The bad news? The big exception (and what necessitates that “mostly”) is the ending, which the film manages to botch in a massive way.

Back in early 2021, when The Running Man remake was first announced, I wrote about how it would likely be the case that the 2025 adaptation’s ending would deviate from the book, and Edgar Wright confirmed that would be the case in an interview published last month. But if you were like me and hoped/expected smart alterations that would at least capture the tone and energy of the conclusion, all that one can really feel is disappointment. In this week’s special edition of The King Beat (slightly delayed due to its spoiler-y nature), I’ll dig into all of it. Why it’s so bad is a bit complicated, so let’s first recap what plays out in Stephen King’s novel and at the end of the film – which actually stay in concert for quite a long time into the third act of the narrative.

What Happens At The End Of Stephen King’s The Running Man, And How It Compares To The Adaptation

There is a very simple explanation as to why it was always unlikely that we would see Stephen King’s ending of The Running Man brought to the big screen: while the novel was first published in 1982, the explosive finale includes imagery that evokes memories of September 11, 2001, and that wound is still a bit too fresh.

That being said, the movie adaptation’s third act very much represents the majority of what plays out in the book. Having become one of the biggest sensations in the history of The Running Man game show, Ben Richards orchestrates a hostage situation with a woman whose car he hijacks, and his threats get him a private plane with only a flight crew and lead Hunter Evan McCone on board. When they are airborne, Richards gets a call from Dan Killian, who tells him that they know his claim to have explosives on hand is a bluff, but he wants to negotiate a different kind of ending to the show.

Hoping to seize on Richards’ popularity, Killian offers him the chance to replace McCone as the lead Hunter – and he motivates his would-be star to say yes by revealing that his wife and child have both been dead for days. Emotionally destroyed by the news, Richard opts to kill McCone and the flight crew, and he lets his hostage exit the plane via parachute.

In the book, once everyone else on the flight is dead or gone, Richards takes control of the plane, and he proceeds to navigate it straight into the skyscraper that serves as Network headquarters and kills Dan Killian. That idea off the table, the 2025 movie adaptation goes in a different direction.

How Edgar Wright’s The Running Man Changes Stephen King’s Ending

In the film scripted by Edgar Wright and Michael Bacall, Ben Richards (Glen Powell) doesn’t purposefully steer the plane towards the Network skyscraper; instead, the Network is able to take over the auto pilot function and uses it to create a narrative: host Bobby T (Colman Domingo) tells audiences that Richards is aiming to execute a terrorist attack, indiscriminately killing everybody inside, and that action is used as an excuse to shoot the plane down before innocent lives are lost.

When a missile hits, Richards is presumably killed (which would match the book minus the deadly vengeance)… but the movie freeze-frames and becomes a video presented by the revolutionary known as The Apostle (Daniel Ezra). The underground host explains to the audience not only the theory that the protagonist managed to survive by ejecting the crew’s escape pod, but he also suggests that Sheila Richards (Jayme Lawson) and her daughter are still alive as well. It turns out that both things are true, as the next scene presents a family reunion outside of a grocery store, with Ben revealing his survival by stealthily purchasing a new pair of red socks for his girl and having the clerk deliver them.

Not only does Richards get back those whom he loves and thought were lost, but he also becomes a revolutionary leader. When the new season of The Running Man launches, Bobby T quits when he recognizes violence in the crowd, and when Dan Killian (Josh Brolin) tries to host the episode himself, a riot ensues. Molotov cocktails are thrown to burn the studio down, and Richards steps through the flames and unmasks himself before shooting and killing Dan with the “Fate” gun previously owned by Evan McCone (Lee Pace).

The Running Man Movie Trades Dark Vengeance For A Hollywood Ending, And It Totally Sucks

There are two main reasons why I hate the ending of Edgar Wright’s The Running Man, and neither concerns the simple fact that what plays out is different than the book. As stated, I understand why the filmmakers felt like it was too controversial. My issues instead extend from the fact that A) it’s a creative cop out that betrays the overall tone of the source material’s conclusion, and B) it doesn’t make any sense.

Regarding the former, the ending particularly stings after seeing Francis Lawrence’s The Long Walk a couple of months ago – an adaptation of another Stephen King book that was also first published with King’s pseudonym Richard Bachman. For decades, that novel’s darkness earned it the reputation of being unadaptable… and screenwriter J.T. Mollner crafted an ending that was even darker than what the author came up with (it’s so dark that I actually felt it went too far as I was watching it, though I came around to loving it after letting it stew in my brain). Meanwhile, the word that comes to mind when I think of the Running Man ending is “nerfed.”

On top of being a betrayal of the source material, adding insult to injury is that there are major logic problems. In saying that, I’m not referring to Richards’ survival – which is super lame but at least semi-plausible; the story has a much more significant impact with his martyrdom, but his becoming a revolutionary leader is… fine. When discussing logic problems, I’m talking about his wife and child being alive.

The extreme ruthlessness of the Network’s operations are on full display throughout the movie (which is to say that they don’t seem very choosy when it comes to having people killed), and Sheila and her daughter being alive represents a liability given that footage of their execution was featured on the show and broadcast to millions of viewers. Anyone aware of their survival would know that the Network is lying and question more of the “truths” that they’ve been sold – and the grocery store scene suggests that Sheila isn’t exactly living her life in the shadows/on the run. The Network has every reason to kill them and zero to let them live, but that fact is ignored in favor of an ending that is the most overt example of Hollywood bubblegum that I’ve seen in what feels like a long time.

This is perhaps recency bias talking, but I feel as though I haven’t been this let down by a movie all year – and I say that having mostly liked The Running Man and giving it a positive review. Stephen King movies, including Stand By Me, The Shining, The Shawshank Redemption and The Mist, have delivered some of the greatest endings in cinema history, but at present I’m leaning towards thinking that this one stands among the worst.

That brings an end to this week’s spoiler-filled (and admittedly disappointment-driven) edition of The King Beat, but in seven days, be sure to come back here to CinemaBlend for a fresh column examining the biggest happenings in the world of Stephen King. And if you’re curious what’s still on the way now that all six 2025 King adaptations have premiered, head on over to our Upcoming Stephen King Movies and TV guide to learn about all of the dozens of projects that have been announced/are in development.

2025 is in the running for the best year ever for Stephen King adaptations, with mega-standouts like the gory mayhem of Oz Perkins’ The Monkey, the bleak masterpiece The Long Walk, and the life-affirming journey of The Life of Chuck. No moratoriums are in place, however, so we can look forward to plenty of other upcoming horror movies and shows inspired by King’s works. Such as this wildly unexpected new announcement.

Indie studio Intrinsic Value Films is set to bring several high-interest projects to the American Film Market, which takes place from November 11-15, and one of those pitches is ann adaptation of King’s poignant short story “Mister Yummy,” which was included in the 2015 collection The Bazaar of Bad Dreams. (It’s one of only two stories in the anthology that hadn’t ever been published previously.)

The screenplay for the Mister Yummy feature is being handled by up-and-coming screenwriter Troy Blake, whose only other credit at the moment is for the as-yet-unproduced crime thriller The Trespassers, adapted from the posthumously published story of the same name. Producer Thomas Mahoney, whose recent productions includes 2023’s Only the Good Survive and The Line, will be behind both of the Blake-scripted projects. (Mahoney is also producing the upcoming horror Claire, which reunites Jessica Jones’ Krysten Ritter and Carrie-Anne Moss.)

Why "Mister Yummy" Is Such An Unexpected Story To Adapt

For one, this is one of those Stephen King tales that takes a sweeping step back from traditionally gory or spooky horror storytelling, and delves more into emotional introspections surrounding the fleetingness of life. And two, it doesn't exactly lay out an extremely lengthy or complicated plot, so it will likely require quite a bit of additional crafting to expand these characters' lives for live-action.

To that end, I'm really hoping Blake, Mahoney and other creatives choose not to change too much about the story, particularly the timeline setting and the specifics that go along with it. Described as being a "haunting tale," the synopsis from Intrinsic Value (via Deadline) goes on to say:

More specifically, the story's main character Ollie Franklin is winding down his days in an assisted living facility, where he shares stories about his life with a fellow elderly man. His life story is filled with complications, as he grew up as a gay man in the 1980s when the AIDS crisis was peaking. It was around that time when his existence was forever affected by meeting the handsome entity dubbed by others as "Mister Yummy."

Already, it sounds unlike any other Stephen King adaptation I can think of, since dancing in '80s gay bars isn't exactly prominent in classics like Pet Semetary and Cujo. It also sounds like a far quieter and limited in scope than a lot of other King adaptations. But I hope the powers that be decide to stick with this scope, rather than trying to beef everything up for the big screen. Genre fiction doesn't usually coincide with the AIDS epidemic, giving this the edge to be truly unique.

Also, while I'm tossing hopes around, can somebody cast Matt Bomer in this already?

While “Mister Yummy” will be the first story from The Bazaar of Bad Dreams to reach full fruition if it does get made, it definitely isn’t the first entry to be at the center of potential adaptation news. Even ahead of its publication, one fo the short stories included — “Bad LIttle Kid” — was optioned to get turned into a feature from producer Laurent Bouzereau back in 2014, with “Drunken Fireworks” (which debuted as an audiobook novella) optioned in 2015 for a feature starring James Franco. “Mile 81” was attached to director Alistair Legrand in 2019, and a year later, Lionsgate opted in to adapt “The Little Green God of Agony” as a movie scripted by Ian B. Goldberg and Richard Naing.

None of those projects ever reached the production stage, however, so let’s hope that Mister Yummy has more luck than that on its way to getting made. Also, if anyone wants to spin a more comedic King adaptation akin to The Monkey out of some of these Bazaar stories, we’d be perfectly okay with that.