The Star-Studded Stephen King Horror Series You Can’t Watch Today Needs To Be Saved
Fans of Stephen King have no shortage of excellent on-screen adaptations to sift through, with some projects such as It, The Shining, and Carrie touting incredible film iterations. Unfortunately, not all of Stephen King’s works have been respected on the same level, as Nightmares & Dreamscapes: From the Stories of Stephen King is currently not available to stream on any major service. The series originally ran on TNT back in 2006, so as far as we can tell, Warner Brothers should still retain ownership over the creepy anthology series.
Zaslav’s Warner Bros.
Given that Warner Brothers still likely owns Nightmares & Dreamscapes: From the Stories of Stephen King, it’s no real surprise that the series isn’t available to stream through Max.
Warner executives such as David Zaslav have seemingly made it their mission to restrict their exclusive content from the viewing public in recent years, with some completed films such as Batgirl and Coyote vs. Acme scrapped entirely, never to see the light of day. In this way, it seems that these projects are at the center of their own Stephen King-like horror story, destined to languish on some executive’s hard drive for no justifiable reason.
Stephen King Meets Black Mirror
Unlike the previously mentioned films, Nightmares & Dreamscapes has already released and garnered a cult audience, meaning there are droves of viewers who would leap at the chance to see it back on the small screen.
Nightmares & Dreamscapes originally ran for 8 episodes, touting performances from such acclaimed actors as Ron Livingston, William Hurt, Henry Thomas, and Shameless‘ William H. Macy. The series also touted a band of excellent directors, including The Happytime Murders‘ Brian Henson, Rizzoli & Isles‘ Mark Haber, and The X-Files‘ Rob Bowman.
As expected, each episode of Nightmares & Dreamscapes: From the Stories of Stephen King adapts two different short stories from the eponymous horror author, in a thematically-connected but otherwise disjointed fashion.
The show was essentially the Black Mirror of its day, offering insight into the human condition from an independent exploration of something not quite human.
New Episodes Should Be Produced
While it would certainly be a step in the right direction to bring the series to streaming platforms, I would take things a step further and argue that whole new episodes should be produced. There’s no shortage of untapped Stephen King works, so what exactly is stopping Netflix or some other massive studio from ordering more Nightmares & Dreamscapes from King’s epic catalogue?
Netflix has already proven that there’s an audience for this sort of thing by tapping Guillermo del Toro for the Cabinet of Curiosities mini-series, so this seems like the logical next step.
Lots Of King Out There
Plus, if the title of Nightmares & Dreamscapes is hemmed up in some kind of Warner Brothers copyright, a reboot could always take on a slightly different but legally distinct title, as was the case for series’ such as Netflix’s W Bob & David.
Luckily, there’s still plenty of high-quality Stephen King adaptations hitting the box office from multiple studios and streamers, though new Nightmares & Dreamscapes content would surely draw an excited crowd.
You’ll Need To Go Physical
For now, your best bet to watch Nightmares & Dreamscapes: From the Stories of Stephen King would be to dig up a DVD copy. While this is obviously not an ideal situation for a nearly two-decades-old project, it’s all we’ve got until the executives hiding the mini-series from streaming finally wise up.
