If Stephen King wrote it (no pun intended), it’s probably already been adapted at least once. And with IT, Gerald’s Game, “Mr. Mercedes,” “Castle Rock” and several other King-based projects headed our way soon, it’s only matter a time before the master’s entire library is mined for all it’s worth.
But what’s the one Stephen King story, not yet adapted, that King himself would like to see brought to life as either a feature film or TV series? King was asked that very question during an interview with Variety this week.
“Oh, man. Lisey’s Story, I guess,” King replied. “Lisey’s Story is my favorite of the books and I would love to see that done, especially now that there’s a kind of openness on the streaming services on TV and even the cable networks. There’s more freedom to do stuff now and when you do a movie from a book, there’s this thing that I call the sitting on a suitcase syndrome. That is where you try to pack in all the clothes at once and the suitcase won’t close, so you just sit on it until it latches. And sometimes when it comes down on the baggage carousel, it busts open and your dirty laundry is everywhere. So it’s tough to take a book that is fully textured and has all the wheels turning and do it in two hours and 10 minutes. But as a TV show you have 10 hours, there’s always the possibility of doing something like The Handmaid’s Tale, which is extraordinary.”
King also touched upon his tips for properly adapting a novel for the screen.
“I think it’s good when they stick as close to the story as they can because that’s what they bought,” he advised. “You don’t want to think they just bought the launching pad, but they bought the rocket, too.”
In Lisey’s Story, published in 2006, “Lisey lost her husband Scott after a twenty-five-year marriage of profound and sometimes frightening intimacy. Scott was an award-winning, bestselling novelist and a very complicated man. Early in their relationship, before they married, Lisey knew there was a place Scott visited—a place that both terrified and healed him, could eat him alive or give him the ideas he needed in order to live and create.”
“Now, two years after Scott’s death, it’s Lisey’s turn to face his demons, to go to that terrifying place known as Boo’ya Moon. What begins as a widow’s effort to sort through the vast papers of her celebrated husband becomes a nearly fatal journey into the darkness he inhabited.”
