Stephen King Doesn’t Sweat the Failure of ‘The Dark Tower’ Movie

When you're Stephen King, you have the right to bash to bad adaptations of your work. But Stephen King is a class act who doesn't bash anyone but Yankees fans (Go SOX!) All joking aside, the guy is cool as a cucumber when it comes to the many different adaptations of his work, whether they fail or succeed. He has a lot of fun cashing his check, but more than that, he has a lot of fun just watching people try to interpret his work in a different medium.

In a fascinating new interview with Vulture, King talks a lot about 1922 and Gerald's Game, the two upcoming Netflix films based on his work, but he also talks a bit about the failure of this summer's The Dark Tower to connect with audiences. King very pragmatically points out that adapting anything as expansive as his Gunslinger series is a perilous task, but doing it for a PG-13 summer audience is even more difficult...

"The major challenge was to do a film based on a series of books that’s really long, about 3,000 pages. The other part of it was the decision to do a PG-13 feature adaptation of books that are extremely violent and deal with violent behavior in a fairly graphic way. That was something that had to be overcome, although I’ve gotta say, I thought [screenwriter] Akiva Goldsman did a terrific job in taking a central part of the book and turning it into what I thought was a pretty good movie. The TV series they’re developing now … we’ll see what happens with that. It would be like a complete reboot, so we’ll just have to see."

Did he really say that the movie was "pretty good"? I heard it was a pile of trash. While it may have been, you'll actually never catch King bashing any adaptation of his work—except Stanley Kubrick's The Shining—and for a good reason. He's just a movie lover himself who can't wait to see what different artists do with his work...

"I love the movies, Kyle. That’s all I can tell you. I do! Even the worst movie I saw was f*ckin’ terrific. As far as I’m concerned, if somebody wants to make a movie [from my stories], I’m behind that idea and I’m always interested to see what they come up with."

So there you have it. At least Stephen King likes 2002's Carrie, and farting aliens movie Dreamcatcher, and 1408, and the list just goes on and on, and on and on.