Why These 8 Stephen King Novels Haven’t Been Adapted (Yet)

For decades, fans of the 1982 Stephen King short story “Survivor Type” wondered if they might ever see it adapted for the screen. Though King called it one of his favorite works, it was typically deemed too gruesome for filmmakers and audiences to handle. (The premise, which involves a man stranded on an island who resorts to extreme measures to survive, provides the rare opportunity to invoke the term auto-cannibalism.)

“Survivor Type” was eventually adapted as a 2020 episode of the Shudder anthology series Creepshow, albeit in animated form. But that’s not the only King work that’s had difficulty leaving the printed page. While an overwhelming chunk of the author’s novels have served as inspiration for film or television, there remains a handful that haven’t quite made the leap. Take a look at several King books (and one novella) that have yet to be adapted.

1. The Eyes of the Dragon (1984)
2. Rage (1977)
3. Roadwork (1981)
4. From a Buick 8 (2002)
5. The Talisman (1984)
6. Revival (2014)
7. The Breathing Method (1982)
8. The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon (1999)

The Eyes of the Dragon (1984)

King has said he wrote this fantasy novel for his then-13-year-old daughter, who had not previously expressed any interest in the horror fiction he had been steadily churning out. She was far more intrigued by Dragon, which details how Peter, the heir to a throne, overcomes accusations he murdered his own father after being framed by villainous sorcerer Randall Flagg (the same Flagg from King’s magnum opus The Dark Tower), who also has corrupted Peter’s brother.

The story’s scope and setting would likely require a sizable budget. It was first announced as an animated film back in 2000, and when that didn’t materialize, conversation turned to a SyFy made-for-television effort in 2012. Later, in 2019, the project landed at Hulu, where it also stalled out.

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Two things might be working against Dragon: For one, its connective tissue with The Dark Tower could wind up confusing audiences if a separate Tower adaptation is developed independently, with actors or elements that might be inconsistent with one another. Second, King’s fairy tale-inspired narrative might prove too fanciful for modern audiences.

Screenwriters Dan Berk and Robert Olsen, who have been working on a new iteration of a Dragon script, believe they may have solved both problems. Speaking with The Kingcast podcast in 2025, Berk said that “When we sat down to try to adapt the book, just cause we loved it so much, we were like, OK, well, a straightforward adaptation just doesn’t feel like it is gonna work for this because people are used to like, Game of Thrones and other traditional, just straightforward fantasy things. So what we ended up doing is like kind of [like] The Princess Bride … Basically, our story, it takes place in New York City in 1977 and it is Eyes of the Dragon being read to a little boy by the name of Jake Chambers, by his nanny Greta. You're sort of cutting in and out of this New York City brownstone.”

This version would fit comfortably in between films of a Dark Tower series—if such a heady plan could be worked out.

Rage (1977)

Rage was one of several titles King wrote under the pseudonym Richard Bachman, but it’s one he’d just as soon forget. The novel—which details the actions of high school student Charlie Decker over a tense few hours after he shoots and kills his teachers and holds his class hostage—came under fire after it was found in the possession of multiple juvenile offenders, including Michael Carneal, a 14-year-old school shooter who killed three students in 1997. King insists that Rage remain out of print, as he feels uncomfortable with the idea it might incite violence. The same holds true of any movie adaptation, which King is highly unlikely to ever grant permission to make.

“My book did not break [the school shooters] or turn them into killers; they found something in my book that spoke to them because they were already broken,” King wrote in 2013. “Yet I did see Rage as a possible accelerant, which is why I pulled it from sale. You don’t leave a can of gasoline where a boy with firebug tendencies can lay hands on it.”

Roadwork (1981)

Rage isn’t the only Bachman book to remain unfilmed. In Roadwork, protagonist Barton Dawes finds himself bulldozed by bureaucracy when highway construction paves over both his job and his property, provoking him into action.

Like Rage’s Charlie Decker, Dawes takes up arms—but his vigilante tendencies make it hard to see him as a sympathetic character. The last attempt at adapting it came in 2019, when It director Andy Muschietti and hife wife Barbara were looking to turn it into a movie. They anticipated that production would start in 2020, but there haven’t been any developments since: Roadwork seems to be in a fitting pattern of persistent construction.

Two other books penned as Bachman—1996’s The Regulators and 2007’s Blaze—are also devoid of adaptations, though the Western-tinged Regulators was once considered by Wild Bunch director Sam Peckinpah. “I thought it would make a terrific R-rated action-adventure, the kind of thing Sam was terrific at,” King said. “It just didn’t happen and never went any further than that.”

From a Buick 8 (2002)

In From a Buick 8, the son of a fallen Pennsylvania state trooper discovers that the Buick Roadmaster once considered a curio by his father’s police colleagues might harbor supernatural abilities—and may, in fact, be able to act as a conduit to another realm of existence.

The book’s adaptation rights have passed through several hands, among them George Romero, Tobe Hooper, and actor Thomas Jane, who starred in the King adaptation The Mist (2007) and wanted to produce a feature film version. More recently, it’s been discussed as a series from Conjuring producer James Wan. One possible hiccup is that King already has a killer car title in Christine, his 1983 thriller about a malevolent Plymouth Fury that was adapted into a movie that same year.

The Talisman (1984)

Co-written with the late Peter Straub, The Talisman sends 12-year-old Jack Sawyer on a quest through a parallel universe filled with sorcery and monsters in order to save his ailing mother’s life.

Not long after the book’s publication, Steven Spielberg expressed his desire to adapt it. But while Spielberg wielded tremendous power in terms of getting films made, it never materialized. In King’s telling, the problem with getting The Talisman on the screen was a contentious relationship with film executive Sid Sheinberg.

“For forty years, man, you know, Spielberg talked about it, and the discussions with Spielberg’s rabbi, so to speak, Sid Sheinberg, were very difficult, and they were very argumentative,” King told The Kingcast in 2025. “I was drinking a lot then and doing a lot of dope. And he was very, very adamant that he was going to take care of Steven and not let Steven, like a child, take too much on his plate. And I’m like, OK, we’re talking about a grown-up man here, a creative person. Why don’t you just step aside and let us do our thing? And it just never worked out.”

Another attempt was mounted around 2008, when it was proposed as a six-hour miniseries for TNT but deemed too costly. The possibility of an adaptation was last raised in 2021, when the Duffer brothers (Stranger Things) were looking to launch a feature in tandem with Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment. It seems that if a film is ever made, it will have to be with Spielberg’s blessing: The director said he made an outright purchase of the film rights, meaning his control of the material is not likely to lapse anytime soon.

Revival (2014)

King’s 2014 novel about a man who re-encounters a strange priest from his youth is full of Lovecraftian imagery and would likely make for a psychedelic filmgoing experience. It’s also said to feature one of King’s bleakest endings. (Given the cruelty found at the end of his 1981 rabid-dog novel Cujo, that’s a bold statement.)

The problem? A feature version may have gotten knocked off course by the modest box office returns of Doctor Sleep, the 2019 film of King’s sequel to The Shining. That’s according to Mike Flanagan, who wrote and directed Doctor Sleep and was planning a Revival adaptation. “When people ask me what the phantom limb is, what the project that got away is, it’ll always be Revival,” Flanagan said in 2024. “I had written it for Warner Brothers right after we had been shooting Doctor Sleep, but Doctor Sleep didn’t work in the box office. I’m enormously proud of the movie, and I hear from fans that it seems to grow, but it didn’t perform to the studio’s expectations. And so a lot of the projects that we had at Warner Brothers died as a result, and Revival was one of them.”

The Breathing Method (1982)

The Breathing Method holds an auspicious place in King’s bibliography: It’s the only novella in his 1982 collection Different Seasons that has never been adapted. (The others, which became Stand by Me, The Shawshank Redemption, and Apt Pupil, are all widely considered to be among the better King translations.) The story, which details the unusual way it’s possible for a decapitated woman to birth a live baby, seems ripe for an unsettling time at the movies.

At one point, director Scott Derrickson (The Black Phone) was looking to direct from a script by Scott Teems. As of 2023, however, Derrickson was no longer involved.

The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon (1999)

Like many of King’s yet-to-be-adapted works, The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon isn’t exactly a horror title. Trisha, 9, gets lost in a forest, with a radio broadcast of a Red Sox game her only company—at least, until she realizes she may not be alone in the woods.

In 2020, director Lynne Ramsay was tapped to direct a feature film version, but it never materialized. Recently, JT Mollner has been enlisted by Lionsgate to write and direct an adaptation. Mollner has experience in breaking longstanding King adaptation droughts: He wrote 2025’s The Long Walk, long considered an unfilmable story of a dystopian walkathon.