Stephen King is without a doubt one of the most prolific and well-known novelists of the modern era. He has transcended the literary community and become an icon of pop culture, and most people would have a passing recognition of his work whether or not they were aware of it. An indicator of this is just how many film adaptations are made of his work – and with 65 novels and over 200 short stories to his name, the well is showing no signs of going dry. Every year more and more are made, and 2025 has been no different.
This year there have been five major screen adaptations of King’s work. Edgar Wright’s The Running Man, Francis Lawrence’s The Long Walk, Osgood Perkins’ The Monkey, Mike Flanagan’s The Life of Chuck, and Andy Muschietti’s TV continuation of the It mythology with HBO’s Welcome to Derry.
It isn’t out of the ordinary for there to be so many King tales on our screens, but it struck me that this year in particular there has been an interesting subtext and metanarrative surrounding these stories. Let me take you through what I think the 2025 class of Stephen King adaptations has to say about our current moment.
The first two major films that are probably most recognisable to the average movie-goer are The Running Man and The Long Walk. The Running Man in particular is geared towards a wide audience, combining the directorial thumbprint of Edgar Wright with the rising star factor of leading man Glenn Powell. Based on a 1982 King novel originally released under his Richard Bachman pseudonym, it is a dystopian tale in the tradition of The Most Dangerous Game that has since been continued by the likes of The Hunger Games, Battle Royale and Squid Game – under authoritarian rule, Americans are given the opportunity to opt into government-funded death games with the promise of wealth and class mobility upon victory. Francis Lawrence’s The Long Walk is strikingly similar. Also originally released as a Bachman novel, young American men under totalitarian rule are afforded the opportunity to achieve wealth and class mobility through competing in a gruelling walking contest to the death.
Both of the original Bachman/King novels are noticeably more nihilistic and brutal than their 2025 counterparts (although The Long Walk certainly doesn’t shy away from the brutality), but both of these adaptations retain their core concern about authoritarian rule. Reflections, refractions and even one-for-one representations of what continues to unfold in the United States abound in both. The Running Man largely focuses on the implications of entirely state-owned media, whereas The Long Walk interrogates the more and more outdated myth of American class mobility through the ability to work harder than your fellow Americans. Like I mentioned, both films have noticeably softened their endings from their much darker, more nihilistic source material. This suggests a certain hopefulness, an earnest desire to see and manifest meaningful change, something we will come back to.
As with almost all of King’s work, there is also a fascination with death that permeates these films. In particular, Osgood Perkins’ The Monkey and HBO’s It: Welcome to Derry are almost entirely about the nature of death. The Monkey has a more whimsical, sardonic take on the subject, going as far as to use “everybody dies, and that’s f-d up” as its tagline. Both of writer/director Osgood Perkins’ parents (the iconic Anthony Perkins and Berry Berenson) died in unexpected and public ways, and so what might appear as a surface-level horror comedy actually takes on a surprisingly personal and reverential take on the randomness and hilarious brutality of death.
It: Welcome to Derry is a much more serious take on the subject matter of death, using the titular extra-terrestrial entity as an analogue for the ever-present and seemingly omniscient spectre of death. Whereas The Monkey takes the view that death is simply a governing force of the universe that cannot be avoided, much like gravity or time, Welcome to Derry takes the (for me, less compelling) angle of death as a sentient and explicitly malevolent force to be antagonised and ultimately overcome. At the time of writing, the series is only half way through its episode count, and so where it ultimately leads the audience in its thesis is to be seen. All of which is to say that King clearly has always had a fascination with death and the finality therein, and that remains prevalent in his vision of 2025.
One could easily take a look at all of these projects, then, and come to the conclusion that the world is slipping further and further into dystopian authoritarian rule, and that we’re all going to die. Yipee. And while that may still be true, a fifth King screen project came out this year that offers a more nuanced take on this. Not a counter-argument, but maybe an approach to being able to live a meaningful and worthwhile life despite all of this.
The Life of Chuck is the latest project from modern horror genius Mike Flanagan, who is already no stranger to the Stephen King adaptation. Prior to this film, as well as magnum opuses The Haunting of Hill House and Midnight Mass, he has been at the helm of King adaptations Doctor Sleep, Gerald’s Game and an upcoming TV adaptation of King’s debut novel Carrie. The Life of Chuck is based on a short story of the same name from his 2020 short story collection If It Bleeds. Other than to say that it is an episodic and non-linear glimpse at the life of Tom Hiddleston’s Chuck and the ripple effects it has on the world around him, I don’t want to spoil any of the narrative choices it makes. If you haven’t already seen this film, it is definitely worth seeking out this holiday season. There are certainly horror-adjacent elements to the film, but overall The Life of Chuck is an earnest and pure-hearted film about what makes our lives worth living. In the face of inevitabilities like death, sickness and heartbreak, finding the ability to choose life regardless allows our time on this planet to have a net positive effect.
My feeling coming out of The Life of Chuck is that it perfectly encapsulates a lot of what makes Stephen King’s writing so compelling and timeless. At its best King’s writing embodies a humanity and a warmth that is only made all the more vital and genuine when compared to the horrors and darkness that many of his stories ask us to traverse through. I think this is a really resonant and important idea to consider, especially given what these films reflect back to us about the current state of things in 2025. It isn’t enough to simply ignore the things we see around us for the sake of our own hollow happiness. For genuine love, connection and joy to have any meaning at all, it must exist in a way that is able to flourish and shine on despite – no, because of – the darkness it exists alongside.
The fact that these texts speak so clearly about the current moment when almost all of them are based on source material from the 1980s speaks so clearly to the timelessness of King’s writing. Although they do so to varying levels of success – I think The Life of Chuck is the only really fantastic adaptation – they all offer us something specific to think about and reflect upon. When viewed together as a part of one artist’s vision, refracted through the creative processes of other artists through adaptation, they offer us a very particular and characteristic take on the world. Whether or not you agree with that take, this is something to be celebrated, championed and talked about. Where you go from there is up to you.
Jonty writes about film, narrative and culture on his Substack, “Postcards from the Abyss”.
