A look at five brilliant Stephen King tales that would be very difficult to adapt to feature film

There have been a lot of stories in the world of literature that have been described by critics as “unadaptable,” and there have been many filmmakers who have gone out of their way to prove them wrong. Whether it’s David Cronenberg tackling William S. Burrough’s Naked Lunch, James Franco taking a shot at Cormac McCarthy’s Child of God, or Denis Villeneuve crafting Enemy from José Saramago’s The Double, challenging material can be a call-to-action for visionary filmmakers to do something truly unforgettable. Yet with a prolific writer like the one-and-only Stephen King, the term “unadaptable” almost never applies, especially considering just how much of his high-concept scare fare has bled into the world of cinema.

In King’s case, many have assumed that Gerald’s Game would remain his unfilmable novel, one in which the subject matter, narrative style, and reputation of the story would keep any studio from taking a chance on a big-screen adaptation. Against all odds, Gerald’s Game is coming to screens later this year from Hush collaborators Mike Flanagan and Netflix, and King himself has labeled an early cut as “horrifying.” So with that in mind, Shock Till You Drop has assembled five other potentially “unadaptable” Stephen King stories that may never join the ranks of King’s frightful filmography…