Hollywood Needs to Read the Book Before Making a Movie Out of It

Sectional: Josh Boone's passion for Stephen King movie adaptations left me regretful I didn't publish an interview I did with Male monarch several years ago, when an influx of book adaptations done with input from authors raised questions of merely how much influence Hollywood owes book writers. While studios once paid big checks to authors and invited them to go away, The Twilight Saga's Stephenie Meyer, The Hunger Games' Suzanne Collins, Harry Potter'due south JK. Rowling, The Fault In Our Stars' John Green and 50 Shades Of Gray's EL James all have been given input that authors used to simply dream of. This was back when Anne Rice went public (and later apologized) with ire that Tom Cruise was given the role of Lestat in Interview With The Vampire or Tom Clancy whined to theNew York Times about his objection to artistic liberties taken on Patriot Games.

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King's had more books adjusted or optioned than whatsoever living author, and he has seen it all. Here, he explains why his options come up cheap but with ticking clocks, and what he expects from the resulting film and TV adaptations. I lost momentum on this several years agone because of a family tragedy, merely King'southward philosophy even so holds true and he gave me permission to go alee and publish it as a companion to Boone'due south story on Revival and The Stand.

Borderline: Authors desire to exercise more than cash a check and cantankerous their fingers when they sell their books to Hollywood. You've likely made more than of these deals than any living writer I can remember of, and you always seem to selection your works for almost no money, with a brusque ternion. What practice you ask these days when you entrust one of your books to a pic visitor?
KING: I want a dollar, and I desire approvals over the screenwriter, the manager and the main bandage. We effort to brand these people understand, the people that are doing the bargain, that I desire to be part of the solution, not function of the problem. I'm not a hard guy to get along with. In all the time nosotros've been doing this, I've never put upward a red lite to anybody about annihilation that they wanted to do. Considering if they want to make changes, if they want to be a picayune chip out on the edge, I'm all for information technology. I like it.

DEADLINE: Then rather than making the former bargain, with big upfront money, you effigy you'll brand your money on the other side?
Male monarch: The other side of this, also, is that if yous do that, you lot tin can say to these people, what I want is a share in any comes in, as a effect, from dollar ane. Then it isn't just a creative thing, it'due south also the side where I say, if yous desire to do this, let me make it like shooting fish in a barrel for you upward front and if the thing is a success, the way that 1408 was a success for the Weinstein brothers, then we all share in information technology together. You know, of all the people that I've dealt with, Harvey and Bob Weinstein were the ones who were most agreement about that. They were perfectly willing to go along with that. A lot of people feel like you want to go in their business concern. I don't want to exercise that at all. I want to be office of the solution. There were things nigh the 1408 screenplay that I idea were a little bit wonky actually, you know. In that location'southward a office where you brought in the main graphic symbol's sad relationship most how his wife had died, she'd drowned, and he was kind of looking for an afterlife a la Houdini. I thought, well this seems a little off the subject. But it was great in the picture.

DEADLINE: Then you're not an author who feels that what'southward in your book is sacrosanct, even when it'south translated to the screen?
King: No. And the other affair is, y'all kickoff from the belief that these people know their business. There are a lot of writers who are very, very sensitive to the idea, or they have somehow gotten the thought that movie people are full of sh*t. That's not the truth. I've worked with an awful lot of movie people over the years that I think are very, very smart, very persistent and find ways to get things done. And I like that.

DEADLINE: When the author of Fifty Shades Of Grey and her agent made their deal with Universal, it was the offset fourth dimension a debut novelist got full creative control. How much of an impediment is that to luring a great director who doesn't want to be shackled?
Male monarch: Well, let me say first that any script came out of L Shades Of Grey would be an improvement on the prose of the volume. I've read the book. In some ways it's terrific and it certainly has an interesting major character and she's got a sense of humor. If those things translate well, it almost [had] to exist better than the prose in the book did. Now I got sidetracked on that, I forgot your question.

Deadline: I wondered if giving those controls to an author tin toll you getting a nifty filmmaker accustomed to having control — yous had Stanley Kubrick do 1 of your books, for instance?
KING: I think that that'due south very true. When you get a really gifted director in particular who wants to guide the process of the film, the actual cosmos, that filmmaker wants to work with the screenwriter in lodge to get certain effects that they want. At that place was a time when I distrusted that process very much. But having been effectually the concern with and so many films, I have more than of a trend to trust proficient directors than I used to.

DEADLINE: The Shining was one of my favorite books. The first time I saw Kubrick's film, I think feeling this wasn't what I imagined while reading the book. But after watching over and over for years, I appreciated more than and more than the spectacular visual moments in that movie, and I grew to love it. Initially, you were less than thrilled. How does it play in your memory in dealing with Kubrick, a very insular managing director who wouldn't seem the type to be that collaborative with an author?
King: I talked to Stanley on the phone before he started and I remember I could feel him reaching, trying to find his way into the books, and he said, "Well, don't you lot notice that all ghost stories are optimistic, don't you think then? Because it ways that the presupposition is that if in that location are ghosts, at that place'southward an afterlife, nosotros don't simply die, we go on." And I said, "Mr. Kubrick, what about hell?" At that place was a long break at the other end and he said in a very stiff voice, "I don't believe in hell." And I said, "Well, OK, you don't, merely my feeling is that if there are ghosts, they're equally likely to be maligned as they are to exist 'come into the lite.' " You remember the movie with Patrick Swayze, Ghost?

DEADLINE: Yes, of course.
Rex: There was a feeling at that place that ghosts are really kind of on our side, merely it'south only as likely that the experience of dying has driven some of them mad. Anyhow, I think The Shining is a beautiful motion picture and it looks terrific and every bit I've said before, it's like a big, cute Cadillac with no engine within it. In that sense, when it opened, a lot of the reviews weren't very favorable and I was one of those reviewers. I kept my oral fissure close at the fourth dimension, but I didn't care for information technology much.

DEADLINE: How about now?
KING: I feel the same because the character of Jack Torrance has no arc in that flick. Absolutely no arc at all. When we first encounter Jack Nicholson, he's in the part of Mr. Ullman, the director of the hotel, and you know, then, he's crazy as a shit house rat. All he does is become crazier. In the volume, he'due south a guy who's struggling with his sanity and finally loses it. To me, that's a tragedy. In the movie, there'due south no tragedy because there's no existent change. The other real deviation is at the end of my book the hotel blows upwards, and at the end of Kubrick's motion picture the hotel freezes. That'southward a deviation. But I met Kubrick and in that location'southward no question he's a terrifically smart guy. He's fabricated some of the movies that hateful a lot to me, Dr. Strangelove, for one and Paths of Glory, for some other. I think he did some terrific things but, boy, he was a really insular man. In the sense that when you met him, and when you talked to him, he was able to collaborate in a perfectly normal way only yous never felt like he was all the way there. He was inside himself.

DEADLINE: Let'south say there was a modern equivalent to Kubrick who wanted to turn one of your books into a film. Would you still brand that bargain with him and trust in a great filmmaker even if you once once more plant yourself on the outside?
KING: Yeah.. I would. I would. I'll tell you who I would dear to work with sometime, not piece of work with but wouldn't think twice if he wanted to make one of my things into a moving picture. You know this movie Melancholia? Lars…

DEADLINE: Lars von Trier? Really?
KING: Lars von Trier. And, in fact, I fabricated an American miniseries out of his Kingdom Infirmary. I remember he'due south the most talented, amazing director in the globe and I would love to see what he did. And, again, I would stand bated and say, go to it and accept a great fourth dimension.

Borderline: I thought yous were going to say someone like Chris Nolan.
Rex: That wouldn't interest me so much. The other thing that interests me is when you get a gamble to requite a talented newcomer a shot. In that location was some talk about Ben Affleck making The Stand up. I'd take loved to run across something happen with him because he'southward a terrific managing director. Affleck understands story, and the fact that movies are this wonderful medium for storytelling. And he's got a kind of old fashioned way. A movie like The Town, information technology was a throwback to all the great criminal offence movies that Warners made in the '30s.

Deadline: You've dabbled in screenwriting and even directed but haven't been doing it as much. What was your opinion of that whole procedure?
KING: Well, it was a learning curve because I came into the whole matter thinking that screenwriting was work for idiots considering everything was on the surface. Information technology's like the deviation betwixt skiing and swimming; one is full immersion, and that's the novel; and the other one is screenwriting, where everything is correct out on superlative, there'south no thought process. Unless you have one of those crappy or crafty voiceovers, it's all what yous see and what people say. But little by lilliputian, equally I learned, I got more respect for it.

Borderline: Michael Connelly had to go through an ordeal to become back rights to his Harry Bosch mysteries which languished at Paramount since 1992 and he institute the studio had placed prohibitive overhead costs against them. He said he regretted making movie deals for money that allowed him to write novels early, and he paid a high cost for that once money wasn't the large priority anymore. E'er brand a bargain like that, one that you greatly regretted?
Male monarch: Never. I never did, considering to me it was e'er a case of proceed out there and do the all-time motion picture that you lot can and if it was a success similar Carrie or The Dead Zone, I tin can say, you know, that'due south my story. Stand by Me, at that place's another 1, Shawshank Redemption, Misery. I've had a lot of things where I felt, been able to experience really pleased nigh the outcome. And if information technology doesn't work so well, I tin can say, well, they went out and they gave their best shot merely I didn't accept anything to do with information technology. I'm merely a eyewitness in this abandoned vehicle.

Borderline: You lot never had 1 where you basically gave up too many rights and y'all felt similar you were getting jerked around considering nothing was happening?
KING: [Laughs] It's a crazy business and we don't see it. Novelists don't meet it. I'm up here in Maine. I'm not out in that location. I don't take meetings and I've been talking, in fact, I just got off the phone with Ron Howard who has The Dark Tower affair. Nosotros're talking about a new approach on that. Ron is a terrifically bright guy, he's very persistent and he and I speak the aforementioned language. And so, that'due south been a process where Universal turned information technology downwards in club to brand that great, smash-hit Battleship. And Warner Bros. has been sort of, ah, well, we don't know exactly who this is for. Is it for the teenagers? Is information technology for the super hero crowd? What is it? So, information technology's been a little flake frustrating, simply to me it'southward a side issue. Information technology'south fun to watch and when information technology turns out well, it's great. As far equally creative input, my feeling is pretty simple with this: be all the way out, and let 'em do their work, and don't go involved and throw monkey wrenches and all this. Or go all the way in, y'all know, and become a part of the team the way that I am with those brothers, and be willing to travel, make the changes. If you lot have to be on set because stuff comes upwardly, you have to do it. I did a miniseries called Rose Red, with ABC, and one of the principal actors, David Dukes, died of a heart attack on the bear witness, and and so I accept to go to piece of work and figure out how to brand that work anyway. So, that's information technology. If you lot're going to be a part of it, you take to exist all the fashion in.

DEADLINE: The Dark Tower [which would afterward find footing at Sony] is a ballsy and disruptive proposition, with movies and Boob tube serial part of the construct. What has the long lar with the multi-platform and the limited run television and stuff like that. Only I wonder, what has The Dark Tower experience shown you lot near the climate today in trying to make tent poles happen?
KING: Well, it suggests to me two things. The offset is that the one thing studios seem very confidant almost, and with justification, is that the comic book super hero movies make cracking tent poles considering people flock to see them. The other thing is, it seems to me, that the studios take shown some extremely bad judgment in picking things for tent poles that are outside that item narrow field, and I think, I think that information technology's timidity to a degree, because they don't want to make the big, large hazard on something that's unproved. The event of that, ironically, is that when they do make that large gamble, it turns out to exist Battleship or John Carter.

DEADLINE: How does your own work fit in there?
KING: The Nighttime Tower, to me, and I'm non unbiased considering I'thou the writer on this thing, but to me it looks like gold on the ground waiting to be picked upwards.

Deadline: Some of the best films fabricated from your work, like Shawshank and Stand past Me, came from unexpected places, brusk stories that connected with good filmmakers. Is there ane there that you're surprised no one has turned into a film?
KING: Jeez. Yous kind of caught me off guard. I've written a lot of stuff. I guess if there's one that I regret is, um, I wrote a volume back in the Nineties chosen The Regulators. It was one of two books that I thought of as repertory company books. There was one called Desperation, and the other one was called The Regulators and they both had the aforementioned characters but they were all doing unlike things, in unlike places. I had a meeting with Sam Peckinpah a few months earlier he died, and he was actually interested in turning that into a film chosen The Shotgunners, and I wanted to write a screenplay for information technology. I idea it would make a terrific R-rated activity-adventure, the kind of thing Sam was terrific at. It just didn't happen and never went any further than that.

DEADLINE: So it waits for someone to come forth and observe it…
Male monarch: Mm Hmm. And I'm a piffling bit surprised that nobody made Jail cell either, nearly the cell phones driving everybody crazy, because I idea it would have made a terrific zombie pic. In that location were some of those dollar options, one with The Weinstein Visitor only they couldn't get a script that they liked. Once more, that's part of the process.

Borderline: Do y'all accept a personal favorite accommodation of one of your books?
KING: Oh yep. I like, well I accept a number that I similar, merely I love The Shawshank Redemption and I've always enjoyed working with Frank. He's a sweet guy. Frank Darabont. And I love the Rob Reiner thing, Stand up by Me.

Borderline: What nigh your least favorite?
KING: Should I even say that? I guess in that location are a number of pictures that I feel like, a piffling flake like, yuck. In that location'southward i, Graveyard Shift, that was made in the eighties. Just kind of a quick exploitation moving picture. I could practice without all of the Children of the Corn sequels. I actually like the original pretty well. I thought they did a pretty good job on that. Of the smaller pictures, the all-time ane is probably Cujo, with Dee Wallace.

DEADLINE: Yes, and The Expressionless Zone. Male child that was sensational. Chris Walken.
Male monarch: Yep. That's an interesting…but y'all know, the people who made Cujo, I tin can't retrieve now the proper noun and the company is gone, but they met with me and my wife at the Un Plaza Hotel in New York. I was a immature writer at the fourth dimension and this is a case of them showing some deference to the writer when they didn't have to, contractually, because they did that. A lot of picture people are not sharks. They're not fiends. And they're not stupid and they're not untalented. And they'll come to a author and say, give u.s. some input on this. And I retrieve them maxim, you lot know, at the stop of the novel the little male child died, and they said, jeez, what would yous think if we let the fiddling male child live at the end? I said, if you didn't, I think they'd desire to lynch the states all at every theater in America. So they made that change and they had my complete approval to practice that.

DEADLINE: You lot published a sequel to The Shining, Dr. Sleep, with a grownup Danny Torrance. Warner Bros. made the first Shining. Is that a priority for you?
KING: Well, I oasis't heard annihilation from anybody about any of the picture show stuff yet, cuz nobody's seen the book except for me and the publishers, but it's pretty well washed at present and sitting on a desk-bound. I would think, I would certainly hope that Warner Bros. would want a kickoff look because that is the, absolutely be the right fit for it. I call back they're talking about a prequel to The Shining. I actually did a prequel to the novel, but it was cut class the novel when Doubleday published it way dorsum in the day. It's called "Before the Play" and information technology had a lot of stuff virtually what I would presume Warner Bros would want, which is how the hotel became evil and some of the people who encountered the haunting force before the Torrances showed up.

DEADLINE: Who wouldn't want to read that?
KING: It was never published. If y'all look at the miniseries I did with Mick Garris you can come across a piece of that at the very beginning of the miniseries. There'southward a shooting in one of the rooms, and that was part of Earlier the Play. A mafia hit. It got published once as a chapter book. It'southward bachelor somewhere, but I'll exist damned if I know where.

Borderline: Then what, in your mind does a major author deserve from Hollywood when they accept on the challenge of trying to plow your book into a moving-picture show?
Rex: They deserve a off-white shake and, okay, I've always said to myself, I can't understand why any filmmaker wants to spend $ane million for a volume and so practise something that bears very little resemblance to that book. So, I think they deserve a fair milkshake. Let me say one affair, Mike. The ideal movie…the writer that got the fairest shake that I know of, was Ira Levin. He wrote a novel called Rosemary'due south Baby. And that movie is the book. To the point where yous can say to people, if you've seen the flick, you don't need to read the book.

Borderline: Why?
Male monarch: Considering they're exactly the aforementioned. Exactly. Right downwardly to the indicate where Roman Polanski calls upwards Ira Levin on the telephone and said, in this one scene you've got a matter about The New Yorker and there's an ad for Burberry coats, and I desire to find that consequence and I haven't been able to find it because I want to put it on the coffee table in the apartment. Levin laughed and said, I made that up. So, Polanski doped upwards 1 exactly like in the book and put it on the table.

DEADLINE: Information technology's funny you say that, considering I tin retrieve The Earth According to Garp. I honey the book, and I dearest the motion picture, yet I felt like they were ii gratis standing creatures in a mode.
KING: What happens, especially when you have a long book, is you get this miracle where the book that is 450 pages long becomes a two hour flick, and it'south perfect.

DEADLINE: But information technology sounds like when you lot say "off-white shake," yous're saying the author deserves to have more than to be shut out from the process after they entrust this something they idea virtually for a couple of years, and struggled to put down on paper.
King: Well, yep and no. I mean, I know writers – and I'm not going to name whatsoever names – that I wouldn't let within 2000 miles of a motion-picture show I was trying to brand, considering they're such gremlins. They want to arrive and tinker and all this. Simply the book deserves a fair milkshake. The writer? Nah.

DEADLINE: So what, precisely, does the writer deserve?
King: What the writer deserves is a fair accounting if the flick's a success.

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Source: https://deadline.com/2016/02/stephen-king-what-hollywood-owes-authors-when-their-books-become-films-q-a-the-dark-tower-the-shining-1201694691/

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