The news that Mike Flanagan has the rights to Stephen King’s The Dark Tower series means that the writer/ director could soon bring many more of the iconic horror author’s stories to life on screen. Mike Flanagan is a Stephen King super fan. Shortly after making a name for himself with his early movies Absentia and Oculus, Flanagan adapted King’s novel Gerald’s Game to the screen. For years, Gerald’s Game has been seen as a novel that defied adaptation thanks to its lone location setting and its gruesome content. However, Flanagan managed to make King’s story sing onscreen with a creepy, gory, but eventually poignant chamber piece.
Flanagan later adapted The Shining’s sequel Doctor Sleep into a thoughtful horror drama that was unfortunately under-appreciated upon its 2019 release. Despite Doctor Sleep’s underperformance, Flanagan’s The Dark Tower adaptation will likely come to fruition since the author now owns the rights to King’s lengthy novel series. After a 2017 misfire badly mishandled the source material, it is now only a matter of time before Flanagan gives the story a great screen adaptation. However, since Flanagan also has a movie adaptation of The Life of Chuck in the works, there is no reason to think the director’s King adaptations will stop there.
10 Bag Of Bones
Like a lot of King’s novels, 1998’s Bag of Bones features an author as its protagonist. This King antihero, Mike Noonan, hasn’t been able to put pen to paper since the sudden death of his wife years four years before the story begins. Noonan struggles with both writer’s block and terrifying delusions in Bag of Bones, whose story is reminiscent of Flanagan’s successful miniseries Haunting of Hill House. That show used ghosts as a metaphor for dark secrets of the past resurfacing over time, an idea that Bag of Bones also plays within the book’s twisty story.
9 The Tommyknockers
Stephen King himself infamously hates The Tommyknockers and its TV adaptation, but the book’s shifting focus would allow Flanagan to focus on many supporting characters as his best work often does. The story of a small town’s inhabitants gradually coming under the influence of a malevolent alien object that crash lands outside the town, The Tommyknockers is unsettling, unusual, and has the potential to be a great miniseries. If Flanagan brought the focus and sincerity of Midnight Mass to this plot, he could make King’s weakest novel into an unlikely triumph.
8 Salem’s Lot
While the small-town vampire novel Salem’s Lot is soon to receive a screen adaptation, this doesn’t mean that the story couldn’t get another one from Flanagan. After all, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre’s legendary director Tobe Hooper already brought Salem’s Lot to life on screen decades ago in a now-iconic miniseries. The creative influence of that adaptation can be seen throughout Flanagan’s King-inspired Midnight Mass, so the director is perfectly suited to a direct reinterpretation of the bestselling novel.
7 The Library Policeman
Some of King’s stories feature plot elements so shocking and upsetting that they have never been adapted to the screen. One example of this would be “The Library Policeman,” a novella featured in King’s collection Four Past Midnight. This unbelievably dark story touches on sensitive taboo topics that only a writer/director like Flanagan could be trusted with. Still, it has the potential to be a seriously affecting horror drama that mixes Lovecraftian cosmic horror with a thoughtful study of trauma.
6 Revival
Midnight Mass borrowed endlessly from Flanagan’s unmade Revival adaptation and that miniseries proved to be one of his best works. This means that a direct adaptation of the novel could be a masterpiece. Revival is a combination of character-focused horror and religious satire about a young man with vaguely supernatural powers who is drawn into a tragic battle of wills with a preacher. Underrated among King’s recent output, Revival could be a huge hit for the author and Flanagan on screen.
5 The Stand
Especially after 2020’s disastrous big-budget miniseries, The Stand deserves a better screen adaptation. There is no one better suited to this task than Flanagan, whose sprawling shows The Haunting of Bly Manor and The Haunting of Hill House managed to bounce between large casts that spanned generations without difficulty. Few directors could bring the complicated plot of The Stand to the screen without compromising on plot or character, but Flanagan has the deft touch needed to pull this off.
4 The Dark Half
The serial killer thriller The Dark Half could give Flanagan a chance to mine a pulpier, more intense horror story in the vein of Hush from King’s back catalog. Flanagan’s more colorful The Fall of the House of Usher promises to be a gorier, wilder, Giallo-inspired thrill ride from the director, and The Dark Half could benefit from this tone. An adaptation that feels like James Wan’s underrated 2021 horror Malignant could be a fun experiment for Flanagan and a nice break from his usual emotionally wrenching material.
3 L.T.’s Theory of Pets
“L.T.’s Theory of Pets” is a crushingly tragic short story from King’s collection Everything’s Eventual. Like Flanagan’s strongest works, the story plot blends horror and tragedy as a bereaved hero searches for proof that his estranged love wasn’t killed by a serial killer. Heartbreaking and creepy in equal measure, “L.T’s Theory of Pets” could be devastating in Flanagan’s experienced hands. As the story’s brutal plot unfolds, Flanagan’s ability to humanize even the most unlikely lead characters would prove vital.
2 The Langoliers
If anyone could make the high-concept, surreal story of “The Langoliers” work, it would be Flanagan. Another novella from Four Past Midnight, “The Langoliers” is the story of a red-eye flight that goes missing in a gap between space and time. Soon, the mismatched antiheroes trapped on the flight are attempting to escape the titular time-eating beings. This weird premise could potentially be as chilling onscreen as it was on the page, but the story undeniably needs an experienced director to avoid unintentional hilarity.
1 Needful Things
While Mike Flanagan’s divisive monologues might be a trademark for the horror director, King has plenty of motifs that reappear throughout his own work. Needful Things brings these together in a particularly satisfying story. A small town setting, a creepy new arrival, and a collection of troubled but crucially redeemable antiheroes are all present and effective as ever in Needful Things, which remains one of King’s most underrated books. The story is both perfect for Mike Flanagan and quintessentially Stephen King, thus making Needful Things the best book for the director to tackle after The Dark Tower.
