How to adapt Stephen King for television

Stephen King is considered the living author whose works have been adapted the greatest number of times for the screen. His stories have inspired film and television productions that have fared better or worse. As journalist Matthieu Rostac recalls in his book Stephen King: An Illustrated Guide from the Master of Horror, for many, “he’s a poorly adapted novelist, a man whose work is scrupulously destroyed by the film industry.” However, in recent years, some titles have attempted to change that opinion. That will be the intention this fall of It: Welcome to Derry, on HBO, a nine-part prequel to It based on the novel King published in 1986 to expand the universe of Andy Muschietti’s films from 2017 and 2019.

Previously, another novel starring children has already been adapted for television, adding its grain of sand to the enormous audiovisual work inspired by the novelist. The Institute (on MGM+, a service available through Prime Video) adapts the novel of the same name published by the Maine writer in 2019 and tells the story of Luke Ellis, a boy with telekinesis who is kidnapped and wakes up in an institution that houses other children with unusual mental abilities. There, they are subjected to severe tests to develop and take advantage of their talents, while Luke and his companions try to figure out how to escape a terrible fate.

“The most difficult thing about adapting any Stephen King story is that he’s a wonderful writer of the inner lives of his characters. You can access their darkest, deepest, and most secret feelings, emotions, and desires. You can do that very well in a book, but how to externalize it for a screen is a challenge,” says screenwriter Benjamin Cavell in a video interview. He has previous experience adapting King: he developed The Stand for television in 2020.

In this case, there was also the added challenge of the protagonists being children, which made casting crucial. The series creators opted to cast slightly older children than in the book to make the task easier. Joe Freeman, son of actors Martin Freeman and Amanda Abbington, plays Luke, the young man at the center of the story.

“When Stephen [King] originally sent me the proofs of the book, about seven years ago, he asked me if I had ever worked with children,” says Jack Bender, the series director, during the same video call. “I said yes, I’d done several things, and I told him it was difficult to find the right children, especially in this particular story: you have to find a group of extraordinary kids who suffer a lot, and I didn’t want it to be a cry-fest. That’s why we chose children a little older than those in the book. They are the heart of the show, because it’s about the power of children to survive, despite the adults.”

With a career spanning from Eight Is Enough (1977-1981) and Falcon Crest to the recent From (2022), taking in Lost, Game of Thrones, The Sopranos and Ally McBeal, the legendary television director has specialized in recent years in bringing stories originally written by King to the screen, with Mr. Mercedes, The Outsider and Under the Dome among his credits. “He understands the process of making a series or a film from a book,” he says of the level of freedom King allows when adapting his stories. “When he gave me Mr. Mercedes, he didn’t know if he wanted to make a movie or a series. I said, ‘Stephen, you’ve written such a rich, character-filled 600-page book, and it’s your first detective story. A movie wouldn’t do it justice.’ When he gave me the proofs for The Institute, I felt the same way. If we tried to make a movie, it would be another X-Men or X-Kids. And I didn’t want that,” the director says.

According to Cavell, King is a writer who accepts and understands the changes that inevitably occur in any translation of a literary work into an audiovisual production. “More than any other author I’ve worked with, he understands that the book is the book and the show is the show, and that he has to find people he trusts to make a series or a movie, and then he has to trust them.” For The Institute, Cavell and Bender made some significant changes from the novel that they had to negotiate with the writer, but he eventually accepted. “Ultimately, if you adapt a Stephen King story, he always has the option to be listed as an executive producer in the credits. He only does so occasionally, and only when he supports the product. It’s very gratifying that he chose to do it in this case because he loved it,” says Cavell. Bender adds: “He told us he loved what we were doing so much that he wished he’d thought of it for the book. That’s high praise coming from him.”

The screenwriter and director agree that they feel a special attraction to King’s way of telling stories about “human monsters, as opposed to the supernatural monsters or vampires or other things he also writes brilliantly,” says Cavell. That’s the case in this story, where the adults are the villains, led by the center’s director, played in the series by Mary-Louise Parker. “You’re waiting for some action hero to show up and figure out what’s happening to these kids and rescue them. But no. The kids realize they have to band together to save themselves,” adds the screenwriter.

It’s not just television that insistently looks to King’s stories; cinema continues to do so as well. In 2025 alone, four films feature stories originally written by him: The Monkey, directed by Osgood Perkins; The Running Man, by Edgar Wright; The Life of Chuck, by Mike Flanagan (who is also preparing a Carrie series); and The Long Walk, by Francis Lawrence. Why does the audiovisual world return to his stories again and again? “He’s a great storyteller,” says Bender. “He tells great stories that are unique, human, and with which you can identify. He writes about what’s hidden under our beds and what scared us as children. He’s the quintessential writer of what comes out of the darkness and scares us. He writes about the darkness within humans.”

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