The stories written by Stephen King have been so popular for decades that many of them have been adapted to the big screen, sometimes more than once and even spawning franchises, but there are many books that haven't become movies yet but have a lot of potential. Since the publishing of Carrie in 1974, Stephen King has terrorized generations of readers, allowing them to explore different fears and meet a variety of characters, both human and supernatural, with many of them becoming part of pop culture.
Stephen King is the mind behind now classic horror stories and characters like The Shining, IT and Pennywise the Dancing Clown, Misery, and Salem’s Lot, as well as movies like The Shawshank Redemption and Stand By Me, both based on stories written by the King of Horror. King continues to entertain the audience with new horror and drama stories, and while some of his works are in the process of getting big-screen adaptations, there are some that are still waiting for a chance – and here are seven Stephen King books that aren’t movies yet, but have a lot of potential to be.
1 Insomnia
Insomnia is a horror fantasy novel published in 1994. Like many other Stephen King stories, Insomnia is set in the fictional town of Derry, Maine, and it tells the story of Ralph Roberts, a retired widower who begins to suffer from sleep maintenance insomnia, which makes him wake up earlier each night until he can barely sleep for a full hour each night. As a result, Ralph also starts to see people’s auras and diminutive white-coated beings he refers to as “little bald doctors”, and he eventually realizes that these aren’t hallucinations, leading him to a conflict between the forces of the Purpose and the Random.
Insomnia not only has the horror and fantasy elements typically found in a Stephen King novel, but it also connects to other stories in King's macroverse, mostly the Dark Tower series, with Ralph and his friend Lois learning about the existence of the Crimson King and Ralph having a vision of the Dark Tower. Ralph also appears in the book Bag of Bones, Insomnia mentions a serial killer from Gerald’s Game, and has a cameo from IT’s Mike Hanlon.
2 The Long Walk
The Long Walk is a dystopian horror novel published in 1979, under King’s pseudonym Richard Bachman. The Long Walk is set in a dystopian America ruled by a totalitarian and militaristic dictator, and where a major source of entertainment is the Long Walk, which consists of a hundred teenage boys walking without rest along U.S. Route 1 – but there’s a trick. If the contestants fall below a pace of 4 miles per hour, they receive three warnings, and if they do it again, they are shot by a group of soldiers on an accompanying half-track. The last boy left walking receives a large sum of money as well as a prize of his choice. When Ray Garraty s the Walk, he soon finds himself in not only a physically challenging situation but also one that makes him question who he is and what he wants, and puts his mental health to the ultimate test.
The Long Walk has been close to getting a film adaptation a couple of times, the first one in 1988 when George A. Romero was approached to direct the project, but it never happened. In 2007, Frank Darabont got the rights to the movie adaptation of The Long Walk, but it never came to be, and most recently, New Line Cinema was announced to be working on an adaptation, announcing André Øvredal as director in 2019, but there haven’t been any updates since then.
3 The Eyes of the Dragon
The Eyes of the Dragon stands out from most of Stephen King’s works as it’s not a horror story, instead being a full epic fantasy novel. Published in 1984, The Eyes of the Dragon takes place within the realm of Delain, located in the In-World from The Dark Tower, and it tells the story of Peter, son and heir of King Roland, who is framed for the murder of his father. Imprisoned in a tower, Peter comes up with an escape plan and confronts his brother, Thomas, who takes the throne, and Flagg, a powerful sorcerer and King Roland’s magician, who is responsible for the king’s death. The Eyes of the Dragon was supposed to become an animated film in the early 2000s, and in 2019, it was announced to be in development as a TV series at Hulu, but the project was canceled due to budgetary concerns and other issues.
4 Blaze
Blaze is a crime horror novel published in 2007, also under the pseudonym of Richard Bachman. Blaze was actually written before Carrie, but after King’s Doubleday publishers chose Salem’s Lot over it, and it became a “trunk novel”. Blaze follows Clayton Blaisdell Jr., known simply as “Blaze”, a mentally disabled small-time con artist who kidnaps the baby son of a wealthy man in order to fulfill the dreams of George Thomas Rackley, Blaze’s deceased best friend and partner in crime, who continues to help him from beyond the grave. Unlike the above-mentioned novels, Blaze hasn’t been close to getting a movie adaptation, but it should be considered.
5 Later
Later is a crime horror novel published in 2021, set in the late 2000s and early 2010s. It tells the story of Jamie Conklin, a young boy living in New York City with his single mother, Tia. Jamie has the ability to see and talk to the ghosts of dead people, and these have to answer all his questions truthfully. Tia urges Jamie to keep his powers a secret, but when an NYPD detective draws him into the pursuit of a killer who has threatened to strike from beyond the grave, Jamie learns that the cost of his abilities is much higher than he imagined. Later is one of King’s most recent works, so it’s understandable that it hasn’t been picked up yet for a film adaptation, but it has everything to make it an unforgettable King story.
6 Joyland
Joyland is a crime horror novel published in 2013. Set in 1973, in a small-town North Carolina amusement park, Joyland tells the story of Devin Jones, a college student who one summer starts working as a carny. There, he confronts the legacy of the vicious murder of a woman named Linda Gray, the fate of a dying kid, and how both will change his life forever. In 2018, a TV adaptation of Joyland was announced to be in development, but there haven’t been any updates ever since, so the project is believed to have been canceled.
7 Revival
Revival was published in 2014, and is considered one of Stephen King’s darkest stories. Revival follows Jamie Morton, from his days as a young boy in rural Maine to his young adult years, as he becomes a musician but also a drug addict. When he was a boy, Jamie looked up to minister Charles Jacobs, but when tragedy strikes the minister’s family, the preacher curses God and mocks all religious beliefs. Now an adult with an addiction to heroin, Jamie meets Jacobs again, but this encounter has serious consequences for both. A film adaptation of Revival was announced to be in development in 2016 and again in 2020, now with Mike Flanagan in charge, but later that year, he confirmed that the project was no longer in development.
