While legendary horror author Stephen King has recently weathered a string of disappointing adaptations, there is a chance that Netflix’s upcoming release Mr. Harrigan’s Phone will be the movie to reverse this trend. Stephen King movie adaptations have always been a hit-or-miss prospect. For every success story like the prequel-spawning It movies, there has been a costly flop like The Dark Tower (which lost millions mere months before It ended up massively exceeding box office expectations).
However, even within this existing paradigm, King’s recent movie adaptations have received a sorry reception. Most of the movies adapted from King’s work since 2018 have been critically derided, financially unsuccessful, or, in some unfortunate cases, both. That said, the modest Netflix horror Mr. Harrigan’s Phone could be just what the horror writer needs to turn the tide around.
2019’s It: Chapter 2, the same year’s Pet Sematary remake, and 2022’s Firestarter re-imagining were all Stephen King adaptations that were met with disappointing reviews, while 2019’s Dr. Sleep was a box office flop. Since the completed Children of the Corn prequel remains stranded in Development Hell (for now), the question for October 2022 is whether Mr. Harrigan’s Phone will be able to improve the critical fortunes of Stephen King movie adaptations. King himself took to Twitter to reassure readers that the movie adaptation was a success, but there are a lot of factors playing into the performance of Mr. Harrigan’s Phone.
Why Stephen King Movies Keep Failing
Recent King adaptations have repeatedly failed for a wide variety of reasons. King’s own struggles with endings led to some of Dr. Sleep and It: Chapter 2’s problems, while the fact that Pet Sematary and Firestarter were unnecessary remakes to begin with didn’t help their critical prospects. However, Mr. Harrigan’s Phone won't struggle with the latter since it is based on an until-now un-adapted Stephen King story, and the movie also shouldn’t have the former problem since Mr. Harrigan’s Phone is based on a brief, self-contained novella from King’s collection If It Bleeds. Mr. Harrigan’s Phone seems tailor-made for a mid-budget, straight-to-streaming adaptation since, unlike Dr. Sleep and It, the adaptation doesn’t need to condense a massive story into a digestible runtime.
If Mr. Harrigan’s Phone struggles with anything, it may well be competition from the streaming service itself. Netflix has a slew of new horror movies and TV shows coming out in October to coincide with Halloween, and there is a chance that Mr. Harrigan’s Phone will be lost in the wash. With a teen protagonist, Mr. Harrigan’s Phone could face competition from Mike Flanagan’s YA horror show The Midnight Club, although this miniseries alone shouldn’t be enough to kill interest in a Stephen King adaptation with stars like It’s Jaeden Martell and screen veteran Donald Sutherland. As such, Mr. Harrigan’s Phone might be able to help the critical and commercial standing of Stephen King movies when the adaptation arrives on Netflix in October.