Stephen King Hated Stanley Kubrick’s Film Version Of ‘The Shining,’ ‘Revival’ To Hit The Big Screen

While many theater goers loved the movie adaption of Stephen King’s The Shining – that epic horror movie starring Jack Nicholson – did you know that the author of the book hated the movie? Stephen King reportedly gave an interview to Deadline a couple of years back about the film adaptation, which has now come to light.

Many Stephen King fans admit they are worried whenever they hear one of his books is to be turned into either a movie or TV show, and sometimes for good reason. A great example is the TV series Under the Dome, which due to its initial popularity was dragged out into a longer series that went totally away from the original story and was finally cancelled. While King stood by the producers of the series, many fans felt that it had “lost the plot.”

Well, according to Cinema Blend, it turns out it is not just Stephen King fans that have worries, or actually dislike film and TV adaptations. King has at least one adaptation he is not at all happy with. King admitted in the interview that he doesn’t expect directors to totally stick to the script and that his novels are not sacrosanct, but he feels Stanley Kubrick missed the boat when it came to The Shining.

While King thought The Shining was a “beautiful film” and said it looks terrific, he reiterated something he had apparently said before. The film is “like a big, beautiful Cadillac with no engine inside it.”

He said that, when the film opened in theaters, there were a lot of unfavorable reviews and that he was one of those reviewers. While he didn’t say anything at the time, he didn’t care much for the movie adaptation of his novel.

Speaking of the main character, Jack Torrance, King feels he had “no arc in that movie.” He said that, when we first see Jack Nicholson in the movie, he is in the office of Mr. Ullman, the manager of the hotel, and that right at the start Nicholson’s character is obviously “crazy as a s**t house rat” and only gets crazier as the film goes on.

However Stephen King continued by saying in his novel, Jack Torrance is actually a guy struggling with his sanity who finally loses it as the story progresses. To King, this slow fall into insanity is a tragedy, but in the movie there’s “no tragedy because there’s no real change.”

The other difference that he didn’t really approve of was the fact that, at the end of his novel, the hotel blows up. However, at the end of Kubrick’s adaptation to a movie, the hotel freezes.

King did say he has met Kubrick and that there is no question he is a “terrifically smart guy” and he has enjoyed many of his movies, but he said Kubrick is a really insular man. He said that when you met him and talked to him, he was able to interact in a normal way but that you “never felt he was all the way there.”

“He was inside himself.”

Of interest to note, yet another Stephen King novel is set to be adapted to the big screen.

As reported by Variety, Revival was published by Stephen King in 2014 and tells the story of a preacher who loses his faith when his wife and child are killed in an accident. The man then experiments with the healing power of electrical current and becomes obsessed, turning into a faith healer. As each person is healed by the preacher, strange and often terrifying side effects are felt.

Reportedly, Josh Boone will direct the adaptation and has already written a script jointly with Michael De Luca, who will be producing the movie.

It remains to be seen whether Stephen King will be happy with the results of that movie adaptation. Fans will no doubt hope they get it right.

[Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images]