Only Three Directors Have Made Multiple Stephen King Movies (And They’re All Good)

Author Stephen King is arguably the most prolific creator in the world of horror, as he’s penned hundreds of stories across a variety of mediums. As if the stories themselves aren’t enough reason to cement him in the annals of terror, dozens of these adventures have been brought to life on screens both big and small, many of which surpass the effectiveness of their source material. Part of King’s personal and literary charm is that, for a number of decades, the rights to nearly all of his stories could be purchased for $1 by up-and-coming directors or student filmmakers, as the author himself aimed to support new creative voices.

Even though multiple veritable auteurs have taken a crack at King — Stanley Kubrick with The Shining, Brian De Palma with Carrie, and David Cronenberg with The Dead Zone — only a handful of filmmakers have adapted more than one story. Making these achievements even more impressive is that, of those directors who tackled multiple stories, those adaptations have all been quite good.

Below you’ll find the filmmakers who have all helped manifest King’s narratives into live-action experiences.

Rob Reiner – Stand by Me and Misery

Reiner marked the first filmmaker to double dip with King, first by adaptating the novella “The Body” into the 1986 movie Stand by Me and then with an adaptation of Misery in 1990.

Stand by Me is revered as a timeless coming-of-age story about a group of friends who embark on a journey to find the body of a missing boy. Despite King’s name being synonymous with horror, both “The Body” and Stand by Me are charming, hilarious, and heartwarming.

With Misery, Reiner delivered the story of the twisted fanatic Annie Wilkes (Kathy Bates) rescuing her favorite author, Paul Sheldon (James Caan), from a snowed-in car and helps nurse him back to health. The catch, though, is that Annie is so deranged and so vehemently disagrees with the directions Sheldon took her favorite character, she keeps him as a prisoner until he rewrites his stories to suit her demands. While Reiner is most known for dramas and romantic comedies, his foray into terror helped Bates score an Oscar for Best Actress.

Frank Darabont – The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile, and The Mist

With over three million calculated user ratings, IMDb lists The Shawshank Redemption as the best film of all time, ahead of The Godfather, The Dark Knight, and Schindler’s List. Based on the novella “Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption,” the movie explores the inner workings of a prison and how, despite the troubled history of the prisoners’ pasts, the connections they make together serve as a better representation of their humanity than their misdeeds.

Darabont returned to another prison-set story in 1999’s The Green Mile, which similarly explored the inner workings of a prison, though this time focused on the massively statured yet mild-mannered John Coffey (Michael Clarke Duncan) after he was arrested for the presumed murder of two girls. Through interactions with prison warden Paul Edgecomb (Tom Hanks), Coffey reveals he has otherworldly powers that he had actually hoped to use to save the young girls, yet no one believed him.

[RELATED – 7 Stephen King Movies to Watch That Have Dark Tower Connections]

A bit of a departure from his previous dramatic works, Darabont delivered The Mist in 2007, exploring the residents of a small town being trapped inside a grocery store when faced with an unearthly threat lurking in an all-encompassing mist. Even though the film leaned much more into terror, the premise explored the dynamics of a diverse ensemble of characters, similar to his previous King adaptations.

Mike Flanagan – Gerald’s Game, Doctor Sleep, and The Life of Chuck

King stories had already been adapted into films for decades before Flanagan ventured into the realm, but with the story Gerald’s Game being deemed impossible to adapt, the filmmaker managed to impress audiences with his interpretation of the material. When Gerald Burlingame (Bruce Greenwood) attempted to spice up his sex life with wife Jessie (Carla Gugino), he handcuffs her to a bed, only for him to then die of a heart attack with Jessie still restrained. With how much the original narrative focused on Jessie’s solitude and inner monologue, Flanagan took some big swings to pull off an impressive and unsettling experience.

Continuing his streak of ambitious filmmaking, Flanagan then embarked on adapting King’s Doctor Sleep, a sequel to The Shining. Exploring the aftermath of Danny Torrance (Ewan McGregor) escaping his father at the Overlook Hotel, using his “shine” to comfort dying patients in a hospice facility, what made the movie so ambitious was how it connected to The Shining. In the 1980 movie, the Overlook Hotel remained intact, but in the original novel and Doctor Sleep, the hotel had been destroyed. Flanagan was tasked with honoring both the source material and its adaptations to create a unique and compelling experience.

Flangan’s most recent King venture is the Tom Hiddleston-starring The Life of Chuck, which is set to hit theaters on May 30, 2025. Additionally, Flanagan is attached to develop a TV series based on King’s The Dark Tower.

Honorable Mentions

Mick Garris – Sleepwalkers and Riding the Bullet

King’s most frequent collaborator, Garris has largely focused on small-screen adaptations, such as the miniseries The Stand, The Shining, and Bag of Bones, as well as the TV movie Desperation. Garris did helm two theatrically released feature films, though 1992’s Sleepwalkers wasn’t an adaptation of an existing work and was instead an original script written by King, and Riding the Bullet only earned a limited theatrical release.

George A. Romero – Creepshow and The Dark Half

Romero and King were some of the most well-known names in terror when they collaborated in 1982 for the anthology movie Creepshow, but this marked another movie that was written by King — and even starred him in one segment — yet wasn’t an adaptation of an existing work. The Dark Half, though, was a feature-length adaptation of the novel of the same name in which an author’s pen name comes to life to stalk and torment the author and his family.

Lewis Teague – Cujo and Cat’s Eye

Cujo‘s titular saint bernard is one of the most infamous canines in cinematic history, as his rabies-fueled madness saw him trapping a mother and young son in their car with no help in sight. Teague would venture once again into King’s world with Cat’s Eye, and while this anthology did adapt the short stories “Quitters, Inc.” and “The Ledge,” it also featured an all-new story written for the screen by King, making it not quite a feature adaptation of a single, well-known story.

Tobe Hooper – Salem’s Lot and The Mangler

Just a few years after making the horror masterpiece The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Hooper adapted the beloved ‘Salem’s Lot as a two-part TV movie. With a run time of 183 minutes, Hooper’s Salem’s Lot fits into the grey area of being a miniseries that’s only two parts, and while some fans consider it one movie, others argue it’s a miniseries. More than 15 years later, Hooper would return to King with the adaptation The Mangler, based on the short story of the same name.

Andy Muschietti – IT and IT CHAPTER TWO

Technically speaking, Muschietti did make two theatrically released movies based on a King story, but with his two IT films being based on the same book, it falls into a similar grey area as Hooper’s Salem’s Lot. Muschietti hasn’t entirely left King behind, however, as he also helped develop the upcoming HBO series IT: Welcome to Derry, which is set in the same town as the original novel and depicts more battles with the alien entity that emerges every 27 years.

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