7 Stephen King Movie Adaptations Equal to the Book

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Published Feb 27, 2026, 8:55 AM EST

Jeremy has more than 2300 published articles on Collider to his name, and has been writing for the site since February 2022. He's an omnivore when it comes to his movie-watching diet, so will gladly watch and write about almost anything, from old Godzilla films to gangster flicks to samurai movies to classic musicals to the French New Wave to the MCU... well, maybe not the Disney+ shows.
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There are more Stephen King adaptations out there than there are Stephen King novels, though the total of his adaptations would include television as well as film, and also adaptations based on his short stories and novellas. But it’s quite the undertaking just to read all his novels, since there are almost 70 of them, and having them all published over the span of about 50 years is, on King’s part, also one hell of an undertaking. The adaptations started coming almost straight away, too. King’s first book, Carrie, got a movie adaptation just two years on from its publication, and that’s a movie that takes a great book and arguably makes it a little better somehow. Well, you could argue that. They're similar in quality.

That’s inspired the following rundown of Stephen King movies based on novels of his that are pretty much equal in quality. Some of these are flawed books that became comparably flawed movies, and some were pretty great books that also made for pretty great movies. This is subjective, and the last movie included here will be particularly head-scratching for some people, but it was an interesting topic to tackle. You can go here if you want to find other movies based on King books that, like Carrie (1976), might well be improvements upon the source material, and then if you want movies that didn’t entirely do justice to the source material (there are more of these), you can go here.

7 'Thinner' (1996)

Billy Halleck, played by actor Robert John Burke, holds a Voodoo doll of himself at a local carnival in Thinner.

It was hard to figure out how to rank all these movies, because they're all here because they more or less represent the source material they're based on in quality. So, why not just go from the low-quality ones through to the high-quality ones? And yes, that means starting off with Thinner. This book was published in 1984, and is most notable now for being the final one Stephen King published under his Richard Bachman pseudonym before the truth was revealed (there were two later Bachman books, though: The Regulators and Blaze, neither particularly good, nor have either been adapted to film… yet).

The book’s a disappointing and somewhat sluggish read, being about a man who gets cursed with rapid weight loss, and so he has to try and stop the curse from continuing to make him lose weight before he just dies from being too skinny or vanishes or whatever. The only thing the 1996 movie adaptation of Thinner could arguably have going for it, over the movie, is that it takes less time to get through, but you come away feeling similarly underwhelmed either way, whether you're looking for a good horror book or a quality horror movie.

6 'Desperation' (2006)

Since the original 1996 book version of Desperation is sort of an epic, at least in terms of length, it does end up being the case that some parts of it are kind of good. It’s not an overall disappointment the way Thinner arguably was, but the disappointment is just delayed. That’s better than it being bad non-stop, yet Desperation is still one of those unfortunate Stephen King stories that has a compelling first half followed by a second half that doesn’t seem to know how to wrap up properly.

Once the characters in Desperation band together, though, and start trying to figure out what’s going on, the answers eventually revealed to them – and, by extension, the audience – really underwhelm.

The experience of watching the movie version, released a decade later as a TV movie, is much the same. The first hour or so is intriguing, because you're introduced to a truly weird villain who keeps kidnapping people and holding them in a small (and bizarre) town for reasons that are initially unclear. Once they band together, though, and start trying to figure out what’s going on, the answers eventually revealed to them – and, by extension, the audience – really underwhelm. Desperation (2006) did the best it could with inconsistent and messy source material, yet nothing was really elevated, and some serious elevation was needed to make this TV movie – even by the standards of TV movies – be anything more than just okay overall (you know, once you weigh up the decent stuff with the not-so-good stuff).

5 'Christine' (1983)

Even if Christine is one of the stranger books Stephen King wrote, an adaptation of it directed by horror legend John Carpenter sounds like it could’ve been good… right? Eh. Hmm. Well, it’s cool and also a bit strange how both Christine and Christine came out in 1983, so you can’t say Christine (1983) as a shorthand for noting which Christine you're talking about. The book came out in April of that year, and then the movie hit theaters in December. There was a seeming mad rush to get it out, even if it’s not one of the better Stephen King books. Sorry. Some people love it, but it was probably the closest thing King had to a misfire pre-The Tommyknockers (and not including some of the Bachman books).

The weirdness here comes about because Christine is centered on a vehicle that seems to be impacted by supernatural forces of some kind, which ends up dividing two teenage boys who used to be friends. Christine, the book, feels like something that Stephen King really was making up as he went along, but not as effectively as he might've with, say, The Stand or The Dark Tower books. The movie does ultimately condense Christine a little bit, making it somewhat more digestible, but it’s still fairly underwhelming and not very scary. Book and movie alike have a few sections that are fun, and Christine (again, both book and movie) is better than either Thinner or Desperation, but it’s still not quite at that classic level or anything.

4 'Gerald's Game' (2017)

Carla Gugino as Jessie Burlingame, handcuffed to a bed and looking scared in Gerald's Game

1992 saw Stephen King write one of his most ambitious novels, or maybe his most ambitious one that wasn’t epic in length. That novel was Gerald’s Game, and for something written with clear (and intentional) limitations, it’s relatively compelling, albeit far from perfect. It’s about a woman who takes part in a form of sexual roleplay that clearly makes her uncomfortable, and after she’s handcuffed to a bed and objects, there’s a confrontation between her and her husband, and then he ends up having a fatal heart attack. So, she’s stuck on the bed, basically, and that’s the story.

It’s a survival-focused one with just one central character, really, once the husband dies, which occurs early enough that it doesn’t feel like a spoiler to mention. She also deals with memories and inner demons, so he continues to have a presence there, essentially. It’s a decent psychological thriller/horror story, albeit not quite a great one, and the same can be said about the 2017 movie adaptation. There are limitations here as well that the movie handles competently, albeit just not remarkably. It’s one of the more “just okay” Stephen King books, and the movie is also pretty okay. Not a disaster, by any means, but not really a modern classic, either.

3 'The Long Walk' (2025)

If you want a Stephen King book/movie that does the whole psychological thriller/horror thing incredibly well, all the while also doing a lot with a premise that might sound limited, then The Long Walk – in either form – is worth checking out. They both offer a similarly gruelling experience, even if the movie does make some changes, particularly regarding the final chapters of the book, and when it comes to some aspects of how the competition at the story’s center functions.

The 1979 novel is easily one of King’s bleakest efforts, as a writer, and also the best of his Richard Bachman books. Teenage boys just have to walk and keep on walking. Those who can’t walk anymore are executed. The last boy left walking is declared the winner. It works on the page, or as an audiobook (listen to it while walking or running yourself for the ultimate experience), and then the 2025 movie is also pretty effective at being just as psychologically harrowing and grim to experience on the big screen.

2 'Misery' (1990)

Kathy Bates tends to a wheelchair-bound James Caan in 'Misery'. — Kathy Bates and James Caan in 'Misery'.

There are two central characters in Misery, compared to the one (essentially) who’s at the center of Gerald’s Game, but you can otherwise compare the two stories. Someone is in a bed for most of it, and both work as intensely psychological horror/thriller books. Again, though, Misery (1987) is better than Gerald’s Game (1992), and Misery (1990) is better than Gerald’s Game (2017).

The movie version of Misery is hard to fault, because you’ve got two excellent performances and a perfect balance in terms of keeping the parts of the book that were needed and streamlining (or not including) some other parts. Further, Misery (1990) adds a couple of supporting players who do benefit the story being told in the movie, even though the book version functioned well without them. It’s just a really clever and effective adaptation, doing justice to excellent source material without being exactly the same as said source material. Speaking of a great movie being made out of a great book, albeit with some noticeable changes…

1 'The Shining' (1980)

Yes, The Shining. The Shining (1977) is an all-timer of a Stephen King book, and The Shining (1980) is an all-timer of a horror movie. They are different. That is obvious. Both are scary and compelling, though. Also, this much can be said: The Shining (1977) is often frightening with how it blends psychological horror (madness and hallucinations) with supernatural horror (genuinely haunted things and ghosts), and then The Shining (1980) manages to be unsettling since it does a similar thing.

The things Stephen King really wanted to say, though, with his novel, aren’t necessarily the same things Stanley Kubrick wanted to say with his adaptation, and that makes the whole discourse surrounding both these versions of The Shining rather heated. Still, it’s the view of this writer that both are amazing; The Shining is one of the best books King has ever written, and The Shining was one of the best movies Stanley Kubrick ever directed. That might sound contradictory, but whatever. This writer sometimes just likes liking things.