The Best Stephen King Movie Adaptations, Ranked

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Gerald’s Game is based on the 1992 Stephen King novel of the same name. One reason for the 25 years between the novel and the movie is the fact that for the longest time, it was felt this was the one King novel that couldn’t be turned into a movie.

The film follows a married couple, Gerald and Jessie, who take their holiday at an isolated home in hopes of sparking a romantic flame. All appears well between the two, but fantasy role-playing in bed has the husband dying of a heart attack. The problem for the wife is that her hands are handcuffed to the bed.

Unable to reach the key, Jessie must try to find a way to survive before her inner demons fully take over. Carla Gugino and Bruce Greenwood star in the Netflix film, written and directed by Mike Flanagan.

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Prolific horror director Tobe Hooper directed this Stephen King two-part mini-series, Salem’s Lot, based on King’s terrifying vampire tale. The TV series hit the airwaves back in 1979, so it definitely has that feel to it.

It stars David Soul as writer Ben Mears, who returns to his hometown of Salem’s Lot to write a book about the Marsten House, an old property with the reputation of being haunted.

What Ben finds in the house is something worse. The series also stars James Mason, Lance Kerwin, and Bonnie Bedelia.

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Before Christopher Walken got his reputation of being, well, Christopher Walken, he starred in the excellent adaptation of Stephen King’s The Dead Zone.

Directed by David Cronenberg, the film tells the story of Johnny Smith, a schoolteacher who has a car accident that leaves him in a coma. When he finally wakes, five years have passed, and Johnny has the ability to psychically see things when he touches people. Johnny uses his ability to help the police track down a serial killer.

Things become even more desperate for Johnny when he shakes the hand of a politician running for President of the United States.

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When It premiered in 2017, it marked the second time this Stephen King novel was turned into a film. The first one was the classic mini-series starring Tim Curry as the nightmare-inducing Pennywise the Clown.

In this updated version, and still worth plenty of nightmares, Bill Skarsgård took on the role of Pennywise and upped the scare factor by plenty. The film was broken into two parts, the first one tells the story of The Loser’s Club, a group of seven outcast teens who find out that they must do battle with Pennywise to save the other children in their town.

The film also stars Jaeden Lieberher, Jeremy Ray Taylor, Sophia Lillis, Finn Wolfhard, Wyatt Oleff, Chosen Jacobs, and Jack Dylan Grazer.

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Some love it, some hate it. Stanley Kubrick brought one of Stephen King’s most popular novels to the big screen with mixed results.

Jack Nicholson famously stars as Jack Torrance, a man with demons, who brings his family to the Overlook Hotel as he has accepted the job as the property’s off-season caretaker. It isn’t long before the isolation begins to take effect and the hotel’s horrific history shows its ghostly faces.

Danny Lloyd plays Doc, Jack’s young son, who has the ability to see these ghosts. Shelley Duval is on hand as Wendy, Jack’s wife.

Kubrick took some liberties with King’s prose including that ill-conceived ending, much of which was the bane of King’s unhappiness with the film.

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Not only was Carrie the very first novel Stephen King got published, but it was also the very first novel adapted for the big screen. The film stars Sissy Spacek as the title character, a high school student finding high school life a rough go.

Constantly mocked for her appearance and her fanatically religious mother, Carrie’s life seems to take a turn for the better when the popular boy, Tommy Ross, asks her to prom. But the cruel kids have plans for Carrie. What they weren’t expecting was Carrie having an answer to all of their cruelty.

Brian DePalma directed the horror tale that also starred Piper Laurie, Amy Irving, Nancy Allen, William Katt, and a very young John Travolta.

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Now we are getting into the territory of some fantastic Stephen King adaptations. The Green Mile, which King published in six parts, tells the story of a group of officers who are manning the prisoners on death row.

Set in the mid-30s, a black man, John Coffey is brought into Cold Mountain Penitentiary charged with the murder of two young girls. He has been sentenced to death by electrocution, so his stay will be short.

But death row will never be the same as John shows time and again that he is not the killer they all fear. Tom Hanks is Paul Edgecomb, the officer in charge of the Green Mile and who faces a moral dilemma with his charge.

David Morse, Bonnie Hunt, James Cromwell, and the late Michael Clarke Duncan also star in this riveting story.

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Misery is what you sometimes get with overzealous obsessive fans. James Caan stars as Paul Sheldon, the famous author of the Misery Chastain romance series.

Paul is tired of writing his Misery stories, so he has penned a novel where he finally kills off his main character. Driving home one wintery night, a storm forces Paul’s car off the road. When he wakes, he is in the home of Annie Wilkes, who just so happens to be one of Paul’s biggest fans.

Unfortunately, Annie just found out that Misery was being killed off. With Paul stuck at Annie’s isolated home trying to recover, he must find a way to ease Annie’s slowly crazed mind before something bad happens to him.

Kathy Bates turns in an amazing performance as Annie in this film that was quite faithful to Stephen King’s novel.

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Stephen King published the book Different Seasons in 1982. It was a collection of four novellas, three of which eventually got the feature film treatment. The first of these was King’s story, The Body, which we all now know to be Stand by Me.

Rob Reiner directed the film that starred Wil Wheaton, River Phoenix, Corey Feldman, and Jerry O’Connell as four young friends who go on an adventure to find the dead body of a missing kid. It is a classic coming-of-age story set in the late ‘50s that has everything you could want in a film – good kids, bad kids, Chopper the dog, and that dead body.

Reiner handles King’s material expertly and it has become one of the most beloved films of our time.

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As we just mentioned, Stephen King’s book Different Seasons had three of its stories turned into movies. Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption was another of those and it sits as the best of Stephen King’s movie adaptations.

Tim Robbins is Andy Dufresne, a banker in 1947 who comes home one night to find his wife and her lover murdered in his home. Without any alibi, Andy is charged with murder, receiving two consecutive life sentences. Life in prison is tough on Andy, having to deal with sadistic prison guards and even more sadistic prison mates.

Along the way, Andy befriends Red, an inmate with the talent of being able to get contraband into the prison. When Andy asks for a rock hammer, Red doesn’t think anything about the request and gets it for him. Little does Red know, but Andy has no plans on serving two consecutive life sentences.

The Shawshank Redemption is an amazing story about perseverance in a terrible situation. Morgan Freeman stars as Red with the rest of the cast pitch-perfect.