Stephen King

With his 2007 horror film “The Mist,” writer-director Frank Darabont, adapting a 1980 Stephen King novella, charts what happens to a group of people trapped in a shopping market after a mist envelopes their town. As they learn of the presence of deadly, unearthly creatures outside, the debate over what to do splinters the survivors, with camps organizing around Thomas Jane’s character, artist and father David Drayton, and Mrs. Carmody (Marcia Gay Harden), a doom-prophesying religious fanatic. The humans prove as fearsome as the beasts and face terrible, heartbreaking choices. At the fourth annual Hero Complex Film Festival, Darabont and the film’s star Jane took the stage following a screening of “The Mist” to talk about the process of making the movie, which famously concludes with what Darabont described as “an angry, bleak ending.” Darabont and Jane said improvisation played […]

Thomas Jane as Rick Grimes? It might have happened if “The Walking Dead” creator Frank Darabont had had his way. At a special Q&A following a Hero Complex Film Festival screening of “The Mist,” Darabont, addressing a question from an audience member, spoke briefly about the thematic similarities between two pairs of projects on his resume — the Stephen King adaptations “The Shawshank Redemption” and “The Green Mile,” and his 2007 horror film, which follows a group of people trapped in a shopping market after a mist envelopes their town and charts their personal devolution as they face terrible, heartbreaking choices, and the hit AMC zombie series  he launched in 2010. He also pointed out that he initially had wanted the star of “The Mist,” actor Thomas Jane, to play lawman Rick Grimes, the part that eventually went to actor Andrew […]

Visionary genre talents Guillermo del Toro, Frank Darabont, Roland Emmerich, John Carpenter and Chris Carter will be among the special guests at the fourth annual Hero Complex Film Festival, set to take place May 10-12 at the Chinese 6 Theatres in Hollywood. The festival will open May 10 with a double feature from writer-director Carpenter — a 25th anniversary screening of “They Live” and a 35th anniversary screening of his landmark horror film “Halloween.” The always candid and entertaining Carpenter will appear in person between the films to discuss his career, which has produced genre favorites such as “Assault on Precinct 13,” “Escape From New York,” “The Thing,” “Big Trouble in Little China,” “Starman” and many more. On May 11, writer-director Darabont will be on hand for an afternoon screening of his 2007 Stephen King adaptation “The Mist,” the riveting […]

“Evil Dead” isn’t the only high-profile horror remake in the spotlight this weekend. A new trailer for “Carrie,” Kimberly Peirce’s remake of Brian De Palma’s 1976 Stephen King adaptation, has debuted, and the clip seems designed to detail the saga of the telekinetic teen who suffers physical and emotional abuse at the hands of her deranged mother for viewers who might only have a passing familiarity with the original tale. We see Carrie White, here played by Chloe Grace Moretz, in high school, an outsider the subject of a great deal of torment, and we see her at home, where her overbearing mother (Oscar-nominated actress Julianne Moore) sometimes locks her in a closet to pray for forgiveness for her sins. And of course, there’s the reveal of the narrative’s central story line — the plot by a group of popular kids […]

“Under the Dome,” the ambitious series adapted from Stephen King’s 2009 novel, isn’t set to debut on CBS until June, but the network, maybe wisely taking advantage of the apocalyptic mania stoked by Sunday’s season finale of “The Walking Dead,” has released a teaser promoting the new show in which King promises that viewers’ eyes will “bug out of their heads” when they see it. The novel centers on what happens when a giant transparent dome suddenly seals off the small Maine town of Chester’s Mill from the rest of the world. It became a bestseller earning King rave reviews — writing for The Times, critic Jedediah Berry hailed the 1,000-plus page tome as “the work of a master storyteller having a whole lot of fun.” The series ensemble features a number of familiar faces, including “Breaking Bad’s” Dean Norris, […]

If you’re a hard-core Stephen King fan, you’ll probably take a shining to Dark Score Stories, an elaborate website for the A&E miniseries “Bag of Bones” that is also a scavenger hunt of sorts for longtime readers of the horror icon. More than a simple preview of the haunted and haunting ”Bag of Bones” (which premieres on Dec. 11), Dark Score Stories has sly and subtle nods to King’s novels and short stories tucked into the corners of photographs on the site — there are about 150 references in all as well as some puzzles hidden away that we wouldn’t dream of spoiling here. “We try to appeal to a broad audience and different levels of fans,” says Steve Coulson, partner and creative director at Campfire, the New York City-based marketing agency that created the website and has masterminded unorthodox campaigns to promote HBO’s “Game of Thrones” and Harley-Davidson, among other clients. “We have […]

Scott Snyder, a rising star in comics, worked with horror writer Stephen King on “American Vampire,” Snyder’s ongoing Vertigo series. Hero Complex contributor Travis Walecka caught up with Snyder to chat about the series, about horror in general and about King, who today announced “Dr. Sleep,” a sequel to “The Shining,” in a three-part interview. In Part One of the interview, Snyder talked about “Swamp Thing,” one of two revered titles under DC’s relaunch. His second title, “Batman,” is the topic of Part Two of the interview. This is Part Three, the final installment. TW: Horror plays a big role in your books. Where did you get this wild imagination? SS: I don’t know, man. I feel like I watched too many horror movies as a kid. Growing up in Manhattan on East 23rd Street, there was a video store […]

Kevin McLeod, who has made online games for productions in other media, including those for “A.I.: Artificial Intelligence” and the television show “Jericho,” created quite the stir in December with a guest essay here at Hero Complex that framed the second “Star Wars” trilogy as an underappreciated innovator in American cinema. Now, with “Black Swan” just out on Blu-ray and DVD, McLeod is back with thoughts on two controversial horror films of greatness that may require years or decades to be truly grasped by the mainstream audience. Spoiler alert: Key plot points of “Black Swan” are revealed in this post.) The year of “Inception”: One film says it does, the other one does it without saying. Someone is always saying how similar everything seems. Conscious or not it’s true. My 6-year-old nephew mistakes scenes in Pixar films from his memory […]

EXCLUSIVE The bookshelf creations of Stephen King have been keeping people up at night for decades but Ron Howard has been losing sleep lately for a different reason — the Oscar-winning filmmaker is becoming a bit obsessive about his plan to bring King’s most epic creation, ”The Dark Tower,” to the movie screen. “I really can’t stop thinking about it,” Howard said while shaking his head. “We’ve been meeting and talking and I’ve been reading and researching and just kind of living with it. I’ve been constantly going through stuff and I’ve just been re-listening to it [on audio books] on my iPod and we’ve been sending e-mails back and forth, ‘What about this approach? What do you think of this idea?’ We’re finding the shape of it. We’re moving quickly now, as quickly as we can, and I feel challenged in the most exciting ways.” […]

Maria Elena Fernandez has the lowdown on a Syfy series that premieres July 19 at 10 p.m. Here’s an excerpt from her post on Show Tracker, our sister blog: Syfy is hoping that Stephen King will lead the network to another summer hit when it premieres “Haven” this summer. Based on King’s novella “The Colorado Kid,” the series stars Emily Rose (“ER“) as an FBI agent who arrives in a small Maine town to solve the murder of a local ex-con. Her natural curiosity eventually leads her to discover that the town, Haven, is an enclave for people with a remarkable range of supernatural abilities. Although the agent, Audrey Parker, will solve mysteries every week, her back story will develop over the course of the season. “Why she’s been brought there, what’s going on with her, her history, that’s a […]