The year 2019 brought with it a lot of hype for various Stephen King movie adaptations, but the end results proved to be a decidedly mixed bag. While no new King movies hit the big screen in 2018, 2017 was quite the big year for adaptations of his work. IT earned positive reviews and over $700 million at the box office. Gerald's Game successfully adapted a novel thought to be unfilmable, and 1922 added to King's acclaimed presence on Netflix. There was also one big turkey in the bunch, that being The Dark Tower, a critical and commercial failure.
Similarly, 2019 has also played host to four new Stephen King movies, both for the big and small screens. Pet Sematary set out to re-adapt one of King's most harrowing novels, IT Chapter Two sought to stick the landing and send Pennywise out on a high note, In the Tall Grass brought a story jointly written by King and his son Joe Hill to Netflix subscribers, and most recently, Doctor Sleep tried its best to both adapt King's Shining sequel book and function as a follow-up to Stanley Kubrick's iconic 1980 film.
Just as in 2017, four movies based on Stephen King's work released in 2019, but unlike that year, 2019's crop proved to be more of a mixed bag, with nothing generating the pop culture ubiquity of IT, even its own sequel. Still, things definitely weren't all bad.
2019 Proved To Be A Mixed Year For Stephen King Movies
Hollywood's second try at adapting Pet Sematary received mixed reviews from critics, coming in just shy of the 60% "Fresh" mark. Things turned out better at the box office, with the remake raking in over $100 million worldwide on a budget of $21 million. Still, Pet Sematary 2019 clearly doesn't seem set to overtake the popularity of the 1989 film anytime soon, and seems to have already been largely forgotten. In some ways, the 2019 film pretty clearly bests 1989, such as casting. Other decisions, such as killing and resurrecting Ellie instead of Gage, didn't go over well.
IT Chapter Two carried with it the biggest expectations from Stephen King fans, following the first IT's massive success. Unfortunately, the notorious Stephen King ending problem reared its ugly head, despite a running joke in the sequel about that very thing. IT Chapter Two is certainly a better conclusion than the 1990 miniseries got, and the casting of the adult losers is on point, but the biggest problem the film has is tone. IT Chapter Two doesn't seem to know whether it wants to be a comedy or a horror movie, and can't seem to decide when it's appropriate to amplify one over the other. Critics were much more mixed on Chapter Two as well, and the worldwide box office failed to even sniff the first film.
In the Tall Grass, which went straight to Netflix, was savaged by critics, and viewers didn't give it much additional praise. Most of the complaints seem centered on the folly of taking a brief novella and stretching it to feature length, leading to lots of odd changes from the book, and the feeling that a promising set-up is ultimately wasted. Finally, Doctor Sleep is pretty easily the most widely acclaimed of 2019's four Stephen King movies, earning mostly positive reviews from both critics and those who went to see it. The problem is, most people didn't go see it, and it's expected to lose upwards of $20 million for Warner Bros. Will that cool Hollywood on Stephen King adaptations? He has such a wide range of material that the answer is probably not.