Doctor Sleep hits theaters this week, something horror fans are anticipating with a mixture of excitement and dread. Based on Stephen King’s 2013 novel, it’s a sequel to one of the most influential and important horror flicks of all time, Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 The Shining (itself based on a King book). While nearly every other terror icon gleefully franchises their ideas out for sequel after sequel, King has remained remarkably immune to that trend (for the most part). But if Doctor Sleep does well, it could open the floodgates for more classic King movie sequels. Let’s put on the prediction hat and imagine what they could be like.
Christine
John Carpenter’s 1983 adaptation of a King novel from the same year was a huge commercial success. When Arnie Cunningham buys a vintage 1958 Plymouth Fury, he doesn’t know that it tasted blood in the factory and has been inhabited by a malevolent and jealous spirit that wants to kill anything that gets in its way. The flick ends with Christine squished into a cube at a junkyard, but you can’t get rid of a villain that easily. Imagine a sequel where some of that metal has been melted down and incorporated into a modern vehicle – or even an experimental self-driving car, to keep things current? Good horror comments on the modern world, and this would be a really interesting way to do that using a classic franchise.
The Running Man
Stephen King was such a powerhouse in the 1980s, and wrote at such a frantic pace, that he had to make up an alter ego to publish stuff under and keep the main brand strong. But even “Richard Bachman” got in on the movie adaptations with 1987 Schwarzenegger vehicle The Running Man. This is the kind of flick that could have easily had a dismal 2010-era remake like Robocop, but what would be really interesting is a sequel set 30 years after the original, with the populace getting nostalgic for the homicidal game show and bringing it back. Even though Ben Richards emerges victorious at the end of the original, the future of America is never revealed, and it’s fair to assume things just got crappier.
The Mist
Before The Walking Dead, Frank Darabont made his post-apocalyptic horror bones with his 2007 take on The Mist. When a group of people in a small Maine town get trapped inside a supermarket by a freak storm, they soon learn that this isn’t just a weather event as a dense fog brings with it a horde of terrifying, Lovecraftian beasts. Like most of the best zombie movies, the monsters are just a pretense to explore how human beings can be truly cruel to each other when the chips are down. At the end of the flick, protagonist David Drayton mercy kills the other survivors right as the mist clears, leaving him emotionally shattered. That’s a great starting point for a follow-up, because you know that the mist doesn’t want to leave any survivors.
Thinner
1996’s Tom Holland adaptation of another Richard Bachman book wasn’t well-received at the time, but the conversation around body image and weight has gone some interesting places since then and we could see the right director turning a follow-up into something fascinating. The original flick told the tale of a corpulent lawyer afflicted with a Romani curse to bleed off weight as his life collapses around you. We wouldn’t recommend the sequel bring back protagonist Billy Halleck, but imagine a script where his story is a sort of urban legend passed around in pro-anorexic and “thinspo” circles, tapping into the new anxieties created by our social media world?
The Dead Zone
David Cronenberg’s 1983 King adaptation (that was a huge year for the author) stars Christopher Walken as a teacher who wakes up from a coma to find that he can psychically “read” people by touching them, including seeing their futures. The ability brings him more misery than success until he discovers that the future can, in part, be changed. When he meets a Presidential candidate and sees him causing global thermonuclear war, things get very wild. Walken’s character Johnny dies at the end of the movie, but there’s no rule saying that he was the only person who could have the ability, and a new film could play with the repercussions of the original in interesting ways.
Maximum Overdrive
We’ll be honest: when Stephen King directs his own material, the results aren’t… great. But we have a weird soft spot for his silver screen debut, 1986’s Maximum Overdrive. Based on a short story, the premise is that suddenly cars, trucks and other mobile machines all develop Cars-esque sentience after a comet passes by the Earth. Needless to say, they’re pretty pissed off about being used as mindless slaves and set out to murder humanity. It’s a gleefully absurd, over-the-top story that frankly isn’t done justice by the movie’s mid-level budget. But let’s imagine a world 30 years post-machine apocalypse – the original film indicates that after the comet leaves the solar system things return to normal, opening doors for a whole new society.
Apt Pupil
The least overtly supernatural movie on this list, Bryan Singer’s Apt Pupil is more interested in digging into the evil that lurks within the hearts of your neighbors. When a high school student realizes that his elderly neighbor is actually a Nazi war criminal in hiding, the pair form a tense and unpleasant relationship. Brad Renfro, an all-time underrated actor, starred as teen Todd Bowden, and unfortunately he’s not around anymore to be cast as an older Todd, who we’re sure had a very rich and disturbing life after his SS mentor’s suicide. In a modern world where Nazis wear Fred Perry shirts and march in the street with torches, looping back on this story could be very rewarding.
Firestarter
Okay, yes, Firestarter did get a follow-up… as a SyFy miniseries, so we’re not going to count it. Drew Barrymore proved she was a star in this 1984 flick about Charlie, a young girl who was born with the ability to generate flame with her mind. The backstory of Firestarter is a fun one, positing the existence of a government agency nicknamed “the Shop” that has been tinkering with American citizens for some time to nefarious ends. The flick ends with Charlie going to the media to reveal her powers to the public, which leaves things open for a sequel that could go in numerous directions. We don’t know how many other kids like her are out there, and a sequel could be really compelling.
Misery
The only Stephen King film to ever win an Oscar seems like a curious choice for a sequel, as deranged superfan Annie Wilkes is killed by the end of the movie. But the flick’s coda lets us know that author Paul Sheldon is permanently scarred by his experiences in Annie’s isolated mountain home. Post-traumatic stress disorder is a hell of a thing, and once you’ve been rendered helpless and psychologically abused on this level the scars are going to take a long time to heal. It’d take a deft hand with the script but we think there’s something cool that could be squeezed out of Paul, later in life, either coming to terms with his ordeal or being twisted by it into a monster of his own.
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