Five Great Stephen King Books That Haven’t Been Made Into Movies (Yet)

On Writing is a strange literary chimera, a hybrid of bald-faced personal memoir and blunt, text-bookish lessons on proper composition. When he's not unspooling his rags-to-Redrum career path — the liquor, the novels, that time a van left him crumpled and bleeding in a ditch — King's pulling back the curtain on what he sees as the tricks to good writing (keep the first draft to yourself, read a lot, study the... psalms of Strunk and White). He's certainly figured out what works for him; several of his major works start with a very simple, very conscious formula: Mix two things. High school outcast + telekinesis = Carrie. Possessed car + frustrated loner = Christine. Huge family dog + superbad strain of rabies = Cujo. It's a little more complicated, but that's the germ of it. On Writing also lays bare the most telling (and occasionally frustrating) facet of King's creative process: He hardly ever maps things out. Once you know this, that the author is along for the ride almost as much as the reader, you finally understand why so many of his plots are unpredictable and his conclusions so often run counter to known literary, thematic and cinematic blueprints. Kind of a ridiculous thing to say about a guy with so many "based on the novel by…" credits, but it's true. His plots usually don't build to glorious and meaningful climaxes; they end when the story's been told. Read by King himself, On Writing is a thoroughly entertaining and thought-provoking audiobook experience.

Can it be a movie?
Yeah, but I doubt it ever will. A story this personal and rooted in the real world, can only be done justice in an American Splendor sort of way, with the author playing himself. I see King stepping in and out of the main action to address the camera directly, and I see new stuff added, behind the scenes goings-on from the sets of Dreamcatcher, Pet Sematary, etc. Now, we've witnessed the man take on several bit parts on the big screen, and so far his acting proficiency ranks somewhere between Kevin Smith and Stan Lee. But he'd have to really have his heart in it to make this one work (and of course the title would have to go).

Worried that his name was a bigger seller than his storytelling, and frustrated because his publisher had him on a silly one-book-a-year regimen, Stephen King concocted the Richard Bachman nom de plume and started cranking out paperback originals. From the beginning — 1977's sickly prescient school-shooting novel Rage, which King has since lobbied to keep out of print — it was obvious Bachman was a different kind of horror author. "Dark-toned, despairing... even when he is laughing (despairing most when he's laughing, in fact), Richard Bachman isn't a fellow I'd want to be all the time," King writes in the intro to the audiobook version of 1979's The Long Walk. No kidding. This novel — about a government-sponsored contest that has 100 young men walking across the U.S. until 99 of them drop dead — is decidedly ambiguous in its morals, and contains no reassurances for readers that it's set in a just and sense-making world. It's way more Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" than The Running Man (Bachman's 1982 gameshow-gone-nuts yarn that seems to foretell the rubbernecking reality TV era). The Long Walk is brilliant in its simplicity, introducing us to characters, some likeable, some not, and then running each of them into the ground regardless of how we feel about them.

Can it be a movie?
Well, sure. Not a blockbuster, mind you. Just a bleak indie psycho-thriller content with keeping its audience wonderfully bummed out (on par with the film adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's The Road, let's say). And it's possible The Long Walk will trudge onto the big screen one day; director Frank Darabont (The Shawshank Redemption, The Mist, The Walking Dead) bought the rights back in 2007 and said he envisioned something low budget, with "a ragged and loose and documentary kind of feel." Sadly, that's the last we've heard about it.

Don't get me wrong — Cell runs with blood and is littered with corpses, and definitely belongs in the horror section — but it's also the closest Stephen King has ever come to straight-up science fiction. Almost cyberpunk, except not at all, really. The cock-eyed apocalypse adventure starts with most everybody getting a cell phone call that uploads a new operating system into their brains. First it turns them into animalistic psychos;... later they're more like douchey worker bees controlled by some unseen evil force. The lucky few who missed the call are hunted and converted and/or killed. So basically, it's like the Windows ME launch all over again.

Can it be a movie?
Oh, hell yeah. And now's a good time, too. While these baddies aren't straight-up zombies, they're probably close enough to cash in on modern pop culture's undying affinity for the undead. So let's do this — a mid-budget B-movie. Put out a call for blank-eyed extras! Summon a halfway decent CGI crew! Order 100 barrels of Karo syrup and red food coloring!

For such a hefty novel — the audiobook is (and don't be discouraged) 30 hours long — 11/23/63 is actually pretty straightforward. Present-day English teacher Jake Epping goes back to 1958 (via wormhole, or some such thing) and sets about thwarting the assassination of JFK. It sounds easy, but Jake quickly learns that "the past is obdurate" (English teachers. Am I right, people?), which basically means that history doesn't want to be... rewritten. All manner of setbacks and obstacles (a stomach virus, a car crash, a steady girlfriend) pop up to sidetrack Jake from his appointment with destiny. And even though he briefly finds himself in the godforsaken town of Derry, Maine (the cursed setting for It, if you recall), 11/23/63 is pretty much a non-supernatural, barely sci-fi edge-of-your seat thriller.

Can it be a movie?
Can it be stopped? The word is that director Jonathan Demme (director of Silence of the Lambs, Philadelphia, Beloved) was going to turn 11/23/63 into a movie, to which I say: It's not too late to walk away, JD. Sure, there's romance and time travel, and Lee Harvey Oswald would get some juicy screen time, but the book is actually pretty subtle for a historical suspense yarn. Jake has no confidants in his quest, so all his plotting is done via internal monologue. And all those times where the obdurate past throws up roadblocks? Yeah, at best it'll look like Final Destination. At worst, it'll resemble plain old bad luck. If you are reading this in the future, and you are Jonathan Demme, and you've already made this book into an awesome movie, good on you. Sorry I was/am so pessimistic about the possibilities. If I could go back and change it, I would. Except I could have, but I didn't, so I guess I stand by it. The reviewer is obdurate.

Whoops. Stephen King accidentally wrote a resilient, hopeful, feel-good story that leaves us thinking the world's not so awful after all. But it's not his fault. Following the Boston Red Sox during the 2004 season should have been an exercise in self-flagellation, a diary of the damned for Beantown boosters King and co-author Stewart O'Nan. The franchise had spent almost a century as Major League Baseball's most loveable sadsack franchise, a team... of cursed, bad luck losers who could only be counted on to come up short when it mattered most. Then, under the daily scrutiny of our narrating diehards, the Sox somehow went and won it all in dramatic fashion — defeating the evil empire (aka the Yankees) in the greatest comeback in the history of the game along the way. But, you know, that's okay. Seeing these longtime foul-weather fanboys finally find joy is a singularly infectious experience. Congrats, dudes.

Can it be a movie?
For old-school fans of the game — the ones who believe in pre-Moneyball hokum like "heart" and "guts" and "clutch" — this is a guaranteed winner. But it would probably come up short at the box office. Pardon the expression, but Faithful is way too inside-baseball for a mass audience. There's plenty of drama, sure, but lots more stats and lingo and Google-requiring names from bygone days. Plus, it's essentially a book-length conversation between two guys. If Richard Linklater or Wallace Shawn want to give it a shot, cool. Otherwise, Hollywood should steer clear. You listening, Demme?