POLL RESULTS: What is the Best Stephen King Movie?

While Doctor Sleep hasn’t conjured much fanfare at the box office quite yet, ComingSoon.net’s poll asking readers to vote on the best film adapted from a Stephen King work garnered 3300 votes! Check out the official results below!

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What is the best Stephen King movie?

Top Five

#1. The Shawshank Redemption (34%, 1124 votes)

#2. The Shining (17%, 561 votes)

#3. It (11%, 351 votes)

#4. The Green Mile (6%, 208 votes)

#5. Stand By Me (6%, 201 votes)

Despite being best known for his horror works, the results are in and have revealed that readers’ favorite King film adaptation is the seven Oscar-nominated prison drama The Shawshank Redemption led by Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman. The scares did come close though as Stanley Kubrick’s divisive The Shining and Andy Muschietti’s acclaimed It came in third and fourth place respectively, followed by more dramatic turns with the prison fantasy The Green Mile and the coming-of-age tale Stand By Me.

Here are the rest of the results:

Misery (4%, 135 votes)

The Mist (4%, 123 votes)

Carrie (3%, 84 votes)

Doctor Sleep (2%, 60 votes)

The Dead Zone (1%, 48 votes)

Christine (1%, 43 votes)

Pet Sematary (1989) (1%, 35 votes)

It: Chapter Two (1%, 34 votes)

Maximum Overdrive (1%, 33 votes)

The Running Man (1%, 33 votes)

Silver Bullet (1%, 32 votes)

1408 (1%, 27 votes)

Creepshow (1%, 23 votes)

Dolores Clairborne (1%, 18 votes)

Cujo (0%, 14 votes)

Dreamcatcher (0%, 13 votes)

The Dark Tower (0%, 13 votes)

Children of the Corn (0%, 11 votes)

Apt Pupil (0%, 11 votes)

Gerald’s Game (0%, 9 votes)

Secret Window (0%, 8 votes)

Needful Things (0%, 7 votes)

Firestarter (0%, 6 votes)

Pet Sematary (2019) (0%, 6 votes)

Graveyard Shift (0%, 5 votes)

Thinner (0%, 5 votes)

Sleepwalkers (0%, 5 votes)

Cat’s Eye (0%, 3 votes)

In the Tall Grass (0%, 2 votes)

Hearts in Atlantis (0%, 2 votes)

1922 (0%, 2 votes)

The Dark Half (0%, 2 votes)

The Mangler (0%, 0 votes)

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The adaptation train first started rolling with the teen supernatural horror Carrie in 1976 and thanks to the film’s success sparked multiple studios’ interests in bringing the author’s works to life. The subsequent translations of his works would see everything from critically acclaimed hits such as The Shining, Misery and The Dead Zone to more mixed reviewed cult classics such as Children of the CornCujo and Christine. While he is most known for his horror-related works, he has ventured into more strictly dramatic territory, which helped spawn the acclaimed films The Shawshank Redemption, Stand By Me and The Green Mile.

After going on hiatus from taking shots at it for a few years, Hollywood began looking to bring King’s works to the big screen once again with 2013’s Carrie remake and after a handful of poorly-received attempts, namely 2016’s Cell and 2017’s The Dark Tower, gold was struck once again with Andy Muschietti’s It, which received rave reviews from critics and audiences and was a major box office hit. This year has seen another handful of mixed results, with the highly-anticipated It: Chapter Two still raking in the money, but much lower than its predecessor and receiving more mixed reviews from critics. Another attempt at adapting Pet Sematary also hit the big screen early this year, which received better reviews than the 1989 version and scared up over $110 million, but still polarized critics and audiences alike.

Netflix is also taking stabs at adapting King’s works into films, with Gerald’s Game and 1922 earning rave reviews from critics and audiences alike, while the most recent In the Tall Grass has received a more mixed-to-negative reception from critics.

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