All 6 Mike Flanagan And Stephen King Collaborations (Past & Upcoming)

Image via MovieStillsDB Published Aug 10, 2026, 7:15 PM EDT Faith Roswell is a Senior Writer on Screen Rant's Classic TV team. Since earning her degree in Creative Writing over a decade ago, Faith has written articles on film and TV from a variety of different angles. Faith now combines her knowledge of psychology with her love of monster movies to give more insight into what makes the best ones. You may have read her Screen Rant lists and features covering horror, sci-fi, and fantasy, or read her Amazon Top 10 book, "Movie Monsters of the Deep." Faith has had an extensive career as a writer, appearing on BBC live radio, researching true crime for Rotten Mango podcast, and writing for publications including Mental Floss, Atlas Obscura, and The Daily Jaws before beginning here at Screen Rant. Sign in to your ScreenRant account Stephen King and Mike Flanagan are two of the most exciting collaborators in recent years. While Stephen King's books have been adapted into some of the most iconic horror movies of all time, this has not always been an easy process, with many being considered "unadaptable." This could explain why Stephen King's box office record is surprisingly hit-and-miss, with his vision not always translating well to screen. Still, Mike Flanagan shares King's skill for turning a simple scenario into nightmare fuel, and their projects are now growing more ambitious. Flanagan has an impressive track record, with The Haunting of Hill House instantly becoming one of the best horror TV shows of the 21st century, and the extremely underrated Hush still attracting new viewers. However, just a year before The Haunting of Hill House, one of Flanagan's movies would begin a creative partnership of nearly a decade. Flanagan adapted Stephen King's "unfilmable" book, Gerald's Game, which attracted praise from the horror legend himself, and has preceded five more collaborations, with Carrie arriving next. Gerald's Game - 2017 Both King and Flanagan have a talent for isolating their characters, allowing their minds to become their own prisons, but Gerald's Game takes this concept to a new level. When married couple Jessie and Gerald go away for a weekend, their sex game goes wrong when Gerald has a heart attack and dies, leaving Jessie handcuffed to the bed with her dead husband on top of her and nobody aware of her location. Contending with disturbing memories and her own immobility, things get worse when a grotesque figure arrives. Gerald's Game is not the first great movie to be set in one place, but it does present a challenge, with Jessie also unable to move and with much of the story taking place through her inner monologue and past memories. Flanagan worked around this by changing her inner voice into conversations with hallucinations, resulting in a movie that received a 91% positive critics' score on Rotten Tomatoes and a tweet from Stephen King that called Gerald's Game "horrifying, hypnotic, terrific." Doctor Sleep - 2019 Flanagan's first project since his career-establishing TV series The Haunting of Hill House was his second adaptation of a Stephen King story. This time, it was Doctor Sleep which, like Gerald's Game, Flanagan both wrote and directed. As Doctor Sleep is a sequel to The Shining, one of King's best-known and acclaimed works, this was an ambitious move. The title refers to Danny Torrance, The Shining's psychic child, who is now a grown man using his skill to comfort dying patients in a hospice. While Doctor Sleep is almost the opposite to The Shining, with the story following a theme of redemption, Flanagan's Doctor Sleep contained plenty of references to the original movie. This highlighted his skill at both adapting and elaborating on King's work, ensuring the sequel felt connected to The Shining, but without eclipsing his own movie with fan service and overreliance on Easter eggs. Taking The Shining's theme a step further, The Daily Bruin reports Flanagan saying Doctor Sleep "brings in themes that weren’t in the first book, and focuses a lot more on the aspects of addiction and recovery." The Life Of Chuck - 2024 Stephen King's novella The Life of Chuck is found in his anthology, If It Bleeds. The story is told backwards through moments in Chuck Krantz's life, beginning with what appears to be the end of the world. The movie has an impressive cast, with Tom Hiddleston as the titular character, supported by other accomplished actors including Chiwetel Ejiofor, Karen Gillan, Mark Hamill, and Nick Offerman. While Stephen King is often known as "the king of horror," The Life of Chuck has a very different tone from King's best horror stories, many of which are no less terrifying for being short. Mike Flanagan appears in a small cameo role as a mourner at a funeral. Chuck has a vision of his own death from a brain tumor, but resolves to live his life to the fullest anyway, especially through his love of dance. His line "I am wonderful, I deserve to be wonderful, and I contain multitudes," is one of the best Stephen King quotes of all time, and the movie marked a major change for Flanagan, with The Life of Chuck being his first non-horror movie, proving his versatility as a director through its positive reception. The Life of Chuck earned 80% and 88% positive Rotten Tomatoes ratings from critics and audiences, respectively. Carrie - October 2026 As a regular Stephen King collaborator, Mike Flanagan has gained the trust of audiences for adapting the unadaptable, and referencing the source material without relying on it, but his upcoming TV show, Carrie, may have given Flanagan his greatest challenge yet. The original 1976 movie starring Sissy Spacek is arguably better than the original book, King's first published novel, and updating it has been attempted before, with generally unfavorable results. 2013's attempt was deemed "unnecessary" despite updating the story for the age of smartphones. The TV show has made significant changes to Carrie's source material, and these have already worried fans. The show has been modernized, with Carrie's telekinetic powers explained, but the biggest change affects a main character. One of the most disturbing aspects of the original book was Carrie's mother, Margaret, an abusive religious fanatic. However, Flanagan told Entertainment Weekly that his vision for Margaret had changed, with the character sheltering her daughter in a misguided "private utopia," rather than isolating Carrie through the desire to punish her. That said, while the changes are surprising, if anyone can rewrite Carrie as a TV series with a younger audience, it is Mike Flanagan. The Haunting of Hill House and The Haunting of Bly Manor might be aimed at more mature viewers, but one of Flanagan's other major successes, The Midnight Club, features characters of a similar age to Carrie White. Flanagan wrote and directed several episodes, including a record-breaking scene featuring 21 jump scares. The Mist - TBC Even people unfamiliar with The Mist may know of its harrowing final scene, which is easily one of the most shocking and unforgettable movie endings ever written, though it tends to overshadow the rest of Stephen King's story, which is a novella about a small town engulfed in a monster-filled mist. The 2007 movie adaptation was solid, but the 2017 TV show received mediocre reviews and, based on Flanagan's previous success with Stephen King's works, it may not be surprising that he will have a fresh take on the story. Little is currently known about the upcoming movie, but like Carrie, Mike Flanagan has teased that his The Mist adaptation will make some changes from the book and 2007 version. Flanagan is known to be a fan of the original movie, telling Entertainment Weekly that he needed to justify putting his own spin on the story, and his approach will be "very different." That said, he would not have taken the project on without Stephen King's blessing, which he received. The Dark Tower - TBC ©Columbia Pictures/Courtesy Everett Collection In 2019, Suntup Editions gave Mike Flanagan a difficult question, asking which book he would adapt if he had the choice of any ever written, and an unlimited budget. The director named Stephen King's The Dark Tower series, saying "there was a time I dreamed of spending a decade making those films." While he felt "that ship has sailed now," he was wrong, with Flanagan refusing to let The Dark Tower movie be the final word for the adaptation. The plan is reportedly to make a TV series based on the books, starting at the beginning with The Gunslinger. The story follows Roland Deschain, a cowboy-like warrior on a quest to reach the titular Dark Tower, the center of the universe, which must not fall. With the rights to a Dark Tower TV show belonging to Flanagan, the project may not be greenlit yet, with Flanagan comparing progress to operating an oil tanker, but it is moving in the right direction, with scripts and multi-season plans. Of all Stephen King's upcoming movies and TV shows, The Dark Tower is one of the most highly anticipated, with every new collaboration proving that Flanagan is the right director for the task. Source: The Daily Bruin , Entertainment Weekly [1], Entertainment Weekly [2], Suntup Editions