Tony Magistrale explores many of the movie versions of Stephen King's works and provides important insights into both the films and the fiction on which they are based.

For the past three decades, Hollywood has faithfully adapted much of Stephen King's fiction into film. Of the many major films that have been made, not one has lost money. Part of this may be explained in terms of King's own popularity in American culture; he has been, after all, a best-selling writer since the late 1970s. But more interesting is what this cinematic fascination reveals about postmodern American culture. In the first overview of Hollywood's major cinematic interpretations of Stephen King, Tony Magistrale examines the various thematic, narrative, and character interconnections that highlight the relationships among his films. Opening with a revealing interview with Stephen King, the book takes us through chapters that explore such popular films as Stand By Me, Misery, The Shining, The Green Mile, and The Shawshank Redemption among others.

A collection of five short stories that have been made into movies includes "The Mangler," in which a skeptical writer investigates a supposedly haunted hotel room that has apparently caused at least forty-two deaths.

A monumentally devastating plague leaves only a few survivors who, while experiencing dreams of a battle between good and evil, move toward an actual confrontation as they migrate to Boulder, Colorado.

Discusses each of the films and TV movies made from King's novels and short stories, and shares his comments on them

Surely America's greatest storyteller, no single author has been adapted more regularly than Stephen King. With 65 existing movies and 30 television shows, and many more to come, the concept of the King adaptation lies at the core of what we understand as Hollywood entertainment, the essence of horror, and the landscape of American life. Illustrated with a fabulous array of familiar and unusual iconography, this is the most comprehensive account of the films and television series adapted from the work of Stephen King ever put together. Every Children of the Corn movie has been accounted for; every remake and reboot wrestled into submission; all the dark recesses of King's imagination brought out into the light. Including fresh critical analysis, interviews, behind-the-scenes revelations and biographical detail, this is both a King completist's dream and a must for all movie fans. Here is the chance to delve deep into such terrifying and beloved movies and TV shows as Carrie, Salem's Lot, The Shining, Cujo, Stand By Me, Misery, The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile, and such modern marvels as Castle Rock, Mr. Mercedes, Pet Sematary, It: Chapters One and Two, and Doctor Sleep.

Includes the stories “The Body” and “Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption”—set in the fictional town of Castle Rock, Maine A “hypnotic” (The New York Times Book Review) collection of four novellas—including the inspirations behind the films Stand By Me and The Shawshank Redemption—from Stephen King, bound together by the changing of seasons, each taking on the theme of a journey with strikingly different tones and characters. This gripping collection begins with “Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption,” in which an unjustly imprisoned convict seeks a strange and startling revenge—the basis for the Best Picture Academy Award-nominee The Shawshank Redemption. Next is “Apt Pupil,” the inspiration for the film of the same name about top high school student Todd Bowden and his obsession with the dark and deadly past of an older man in town. In “The Body,” four rambunctious young boys plunge through the façade of a small town and come face-to-face with life, death, and intimations of their own mortality. This novella became the movie Stand By Me. Finally, a disgraced woman is determined to triumph over death in “The Breathing Method.” “The wondrous readability of his work, as well as the instant sense of communication with his characters, are what make Stephen King the consummate storyteller that he is,” hailed the Houston Chronicle about Different Seasons.