From ‘Carrie’ to ‘IT Chapter Two,’ Your Complete Guide to the Films and TV Shows of Stephen King

The world first became familiar with author Stephen King in the 1970s, and not with his voice a whisper on the wind gradually gaining more force. Instead, his talent screamed out (appropriately enough, given the subject matter he was writing about) with his novels from that decade: Carrie (1974), Salem’s Lot (1975), The Shining (1977) and The Stand (1978). A sensation from the start, he immediately caught the attention of Hollywood, the first result of that being director Brian DePalma‘s 1976 adaptation of Carrie — about an abused high school girl who turns her newly revealed telekinetic abilities against her tormentors. And it’s continued from there, King’s name appearing on dozens of movies, TV shows, miniseries and, now, streaming shows.

“I’ve had a lot of things where I felt I’ve been able to feel really pleased about the outcome,” King told joe.ie. “And if it doesn’t work so well, I can say, ‘Well, they went out and they gave their best shot, but I didn’t have anything to do with it. I’m just a bystander in this car wreck.”

Elaborating with Rolling Stone, he said, “The movies have never been a big deal to me. The movies are the movies. They just make them. If they’re good, that’s terrific. If they’re not, they’re not. But I see them as a lesser medium than fiction, than literature, and a more ephemeral medium.”

Which is not to say he isn’t a fan of some of them (particularly considering that his name has been appearing on many as of late). “Stand by Me I thought was true to the book,” he said in the same interview, “and because it had the emotional gradient of the story, it was moving. I think I scared the s–t out of [director] Rob Reiner. He showed it to me in the screening room at the Beverly Hills Hotel. I was out there for something else, and he said, ‘Can I come over and show you this movie?’ And you have to remember that the movie was made on a shoestring. It was supposed to be one of those things that opened in six theaters and then maybe disappeared. And instead it went viral. When the movie was over, I hugged him because I was moved to tears, because it was so autobiographical. But Stand by Me, Shawshank Redemption, Green Mile are all really great ones. Misery is a great film. Delores Claiborne is a really, really good film. Cujo is terrific.”

Between Carrie in 1976 and IT Chapter Two in 2019, there are nearly 100 projects with Stephen King’s name attached to them. Please scroll down for a guide to them all.