Stephen King’s 10 Favorite Movies of All Time Includes Only One Horror Film

William Shakespeare might hold the title of most-adapted author, but Stephen King puts up some fierce competition. At least 69 feature films have been made based on King’s works, from the critically celebrated (The Shining [1980], The Shawshank Redemption [1994]) to the barely-seen (several Children of the Corn sequels).

1. King’s Favorites
2. King in the Director’s Chair

The Long Walk, a film based on his 1979 book written under the pseudonym Richard Bachman, opens this week, which may have been what prompted King to share his top 10 personal film list on X.

King’s Favorites

King presented his list in no particular order, and here it appears in order of release:

1. Casablanca (1942)
2. Double Indemnity (1944)
3. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)
4. The Getaway (1972)
5. Mean Streets (1973)
6. The Godfather Part II (1974)
7. Jaws (1975)
8. Sorcerer (1977)
9. Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)
10. Groundhog Day (1993)

King fans might find it interesting that no hardcore horror films appear on his list, save for 1975’s horror-thriller hybrid Jaws. Only one comedy, 1993’s Groundhog Day, made it; 1977’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind represents the only science-fiction film.

The remainder are what might be classified as a collection of stories of desperate people caught in desperate situations. In Sorcerer, which is a remake of the 1953 French film The Wages of Fear, Roy Scheider is tasked with transporting explosive nitroglycerin across bumpy terrain. Both Double Indemnity and The Getaway feature criminals looking to wash their hands of consequences. In two Humphrey Bogart films, Casablanca and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, characters search for relief in the form of escape (Casablanca’s war-torn Morocco) or prospecting gold (Madre).

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Though King did not get into specifics on X, in 2009 he elaborated for Entertainment Weekly about two of the films that would wind up on the list: “Desperate men with nothing to lose set out in a truck convoy through the South American jungle,” he wrote of Sorcerer. “Their cargo is rotting dynamite sweating nitro, stuff so unstable the least bump may set it off. The original, Wages of Fear, is considered one of the greatest movies of the modern age, but I have a sneaking preference for Sorcerer, William Friedkin’s remake. Roy Scheider had two great roles: Chief Brody in Jaws and Jackie Scanlon in Sorcerer. These films generate suspense through beautiful simplicity.”

King said he excluded four of his own adaptations—Stand by Me (1986), Misery (1990), The Shawshank Redemption (1994), and The Green Mile (1999)—from contention, which one might infer to mean they would have made the list otherwise.

King in the Director’s Chair

While King has written his own adaptations, he sat in the director’s chair for only one: 1986’s Maximum Overdrive. The film, which was based on his short story “Trucks,” follows a group of people under siege at a desolate truck stop after the machines become both sentient and malevolent.

While King had ambitions for the film—he was hoping to get Bruce Springsteen to star—it was not well-reviewed, nor was it a commercial success. Though King said he “learned so much” about filmmaking, he never directed again.

That was not quite the end for “Trucks,” however. The short story was adapted a second time in 1997’s made-for-television film Trucks. And in 2025, Maximum Overdrive star Emilio Estevez told the Happy Sad Confused podcast that he had recently become intrigued by a sequel idea for the film, one which he had at least partially written.

“It was a cool idea,” Estevez said. “It’s a bitchin’ script, man. And [production company] De Laurentiis was like, ‘Nope. We have the rights to this. We’re not interested. We’re going to pursue our own thing.’ I was like, ‘Okay.’”

While no Maximum Overdrive sequel is pending, King has other projects bearing his name due out before the end of the year. It: Welcome to Derry, a prequel series based on his evil clown franchise, streams on HBO beginning October 26. The Running Man, based on another Bachman book and starring Glenn Powell, is in theaters November 14.