25 Movies and TV Shows Stephen King Doesn’t Like, from ‘Succession’ to ‘Kill Bill’

“Succession” (2018-2023)

For four seasons, “Succession” gripped TV lovers (or, at least, TV lovers on Twitter), becoming the most talked about and universally acclaimed series in recent HBO memory. But King doesn’t count himself as a fan of Jesse Armstrong’s generational tragicomedy, and appeared to take a swipe at the press’ breathless coverage of the series after it ended.  

“NYTimes headline: ”Succession’ is over. Why did we care?’” King tweeted in May 2023, two days after the series finale aired. “Here’s a newsflash for you: A lot of us didn’t.”

“Night of the Lepus” (1972)

One of the goofiest monster movies imaginable, 1972’s “Night of the Lepus” stars Stuart Whitman and Janet Leigh as a married couple forced to contend with a dangerous unexpected threat: giant mutated rabbits. Unsurprisingly, the adaptation of Russell Braddon’s 1964 novel “The Year of the Angry Rabbit” was critically panned upon release for its poor execution and laughably unscary antagonists. 

On Twitter in May 2023, King shared his hopes for Turner Classic Movies to do a “giant animal” programming block, suggeting films like “Them,” “Tarantula,” “Willard,” and “Empire of the Ants.” In a follow-up tweet, he explicitly requested “Night of the Lepus” be left off the lineup. “Giant bunny rabbits? Get out of here,” he tweeted. 

“Raging Bull” (1980)

Sure, it’s a stretch to say that King has outright declared his hate for “Raging Bull.” But the author doesn’t seem to be fond of Martin Scorsese’s well-loved biopic of boxer Jake LaMotta either. In April 2023, after fellow writer Megan Abbott declared on Twitter that the 1980 flick is “still the best movie of all time,” King quote tweeted her with a blunt “Sorry, no.” Hopefully he’ll explain his reservations some other time, preferably in a knock out fight with Scorsese. 

“Children of the Corn” Sequels

Many of the films King has publicly denounced are adaptations of his work, but the author is actually a fan of the original 1984 “Children of the Corn.” Based on his short story about a cult of murderous children in a remote Nebraskan town, the original film was helmed by Fritz Kiersch, and King “thought they did a pretty good job on that,” as he put it in a 2016 Deadline interview. 

The original film spawned a whole franchise, with 10 additional movies being made; the latest was released this March. King has no defense for the original’s followup. “I could do without all of the ‘Children of the Corn’ sequels,” he said. 

“Graveyard Shift” (1990)

“Graveyard Shift” is one of King’s more imaginative short stories, focusing on a textile mill infested by a rat empire cut off from the rest of nature, causing them to develop and evolve into frightening, gigantic creatures. That imagination didn’t really translate to the 1990 film adaptation from Ralph S. Singleton, which holds an impressive 0 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes (off of only seven reviews, but still). 

In his interview with Deadline, King named the feature one of his least favorite adaptations of his work, calling it a “kind of a quick exploitation picture.” 

“A Return to Salem’s Lot” (1987)

One of King’s best known novels is “Salem’s Lot,” his 1975 sophomore book about a Maine town getting invaded by powerful vampire Kurt Barlow. The book was adapted in 1979 into a positively reviewed TV miniseries, which earned three Emmy nominations. 

Eight years latter, a theatrical film sequel to the limited series was produced, focusing on a completely new protagonist and featuring no original cast members. The movie, which baffingly premiered at Cannes Film Festival, was panned, and in a 2007 interview with Time Magazine, King lumped it in with the “Children of the Corn” films as a stinker. 

“Needful Things” (1993)

In a 2007 interview with Stephen King fansite “Liija’s Library,” King labeled 1993’s “Needful Things” as a “disappointment” among the various adaptations of his work that have been produced. Directed by Fraser C. Heston, the film adapts King’s novel about Leland Gaunt: a mysterious antique store proprieter who sows discord in a small town by forcing his customers to engage in pranks in exchange for his items.   

Despite a solid cast — including Max Von Sydow as Gaunt, with Ed Harris, Bonnie Bedelia, and Amanda Plummer in supporting roles — the film was panned by critics. A three-hour extended cut later aired on TBS in 1996  to moderately better reception.  

“Maximum Overdrive” (1986)

Give King credit for this; he’s just as willing to trash his own work as he is other people’s. Case in point is “Maximum Overdrive,” King’s first and only feature directorial effort. Based on the author’s short story “Trucks,” the rickety horror comedy follows a machine uprising, as trucks, arcade games, ATMs, and so on become sentinent and attempt to wipe out humanity. The campy film opened to negative reviews and gained King a Golden Rasberry nom for Worst Director, and in the years since King has made it clear he’s not proud of it. He’s admitted he didn’t know what he was doing and was “coked out of his mind” during production, and has referred to the final product as a “moron movie.” 

“Blood Feast” (1963)

“Blood Feast” is considered by some the first ever “splatter” film, with its high level of onscreen gore paving the way for “Cannibal Holocaust” and the comtemporary “Terrifier.” In spite of that historical significance, Herschell Gordon Lewis’ flick about a Miami waiter who murders women and steals their body parts to resurrect the goddess Ishtar was widely panned by critics at the time, and its hokey acting and obvious special effects haven’t helped it hold up in the modern day. King doesn’t go against the grain with this one, and tweeted that it was the worst horror movie he’d ever seen in 2021.

“Transformers” (2007)

Kicking off a (particularly pointed) Twitter thread, King asked his followers which movies they had walked out of mid-showing. His answer? “I have walked out of only one movie as an adult: ‘Transformers.’”

Michael Bay’s 2007 take on the popular Hasbro toy line was an unquestionable success at the box office, appealing to a wide range of ages thanks to its PG-13 rating. It was heavily praised for its then groundbreaking visual effects, but remains unpopular among critics who argue its characters and storyline were underdeveloped — and remained thin for much of the franchise. Bay hasn’t spoken out against his first “Transformers” outing. However, the filmmaker admitted he “made too many of them” in a March 2022 interview with Unilad.

“Kill Bill Vol. 1” (2003)

Yes, you read that right: Stephen King took serious issue with “Kill Bill.” He disliked it so much the horror author reviewed it for Entertainment Weekly in February 2007, calling it “tepid” and “a film that doesn’t matter.”

“You probably saw some good reviews of it, possibly even in this magazine,” King wrote. “Steve says don’t you believe it. Steve says you should remember that movie critics see movies free. Also, they don’t have to pay the babysitter or spring ten bucks for the parking. They’re thus apt to rhapsodize over narcissistic stuff like ‘Kill Bill,’ which announces itself as Quentin Tarantino’s Fourth Film, ain’t we la-di-da.”

King goes on to criticize Tarantino’s use of over-the-top violence, rockstar director “vanities,” and Uma Thurman: “stuck playing a woman who’s a label instead of a human being.”

Speaking with Entertainment Tonight, Tarantino responded to King’s review and said, “Stephen King took a dig at me for starting off ‘Kill Bill’ with ‘Quentin Tarantino’s fourth film,’ you know, ‘la-di-da!’ I can imagine someone taking a cynical view like that. But to me, I meant it, and not in some airy-fairy way. This is my fourth movie and I haven’t done anything in a long time. It’s telling you who I am today, and the fifth will tell you something else.”

“Mars Attacks!” (1996)

To make his point about “Kill Bill Vol. 1,” King compared Tarantino’s kung fu epic to a number of other films. He most notably drew contrast with Clint Eastwood’s “Mystic River,” a film he regards as technically masterful and hugely important to the history of cinema. On the other end of the spectrum, King described two movies as the “benchmark of awfulness.” First up? Tim Burton’s “Mars Attacks!”

Infused with the questionable sensibilities of Ed Wood and more B movie auteurs, this 1996 sci-fi horror comedy is on par with “Killer Klowns from Outerspace.” Its at once notoriously despised and contemporarily beloved for its intense camp. (Audiences still returning to the film tend to be more positive.)

“It was a bomb in America,” Burton said in 2021 anniversary retrospective for Inverse. “It was the first movie I did where it was more successful internationally. It seemed to be much more well-received and more ‘got,’ in a way, by other countries.”

“Mommie Dearest” (1981)

Another of King’s benchmarks for awfulness is “Mommie Dearest”: an indisputably terrible 1981 drama that’s since gained a cult following for its unintended comedic charms, akin to Tommy Wiseau’s “The Room” (albeit with fewer technical issues).

It’s directed by the late Academy Award nominee Frank Perry, and chronicles the sordid personal life of Hollywood icon Joan Crawford and her daughter Christina, who first alleged her mother’s abuse in a memoir of the same name. Winner of Worst Picture at that year’s Razzies — the second ever — “Mommie Dearest” is best known for Faye Dunaway’s extreme portrayal of Joan. The “Network” actress reportedly blamed the flop for her subsequent decline in castings.

“The Godfather: Part III” (1990)

“Mars Attacks!” and “Mommie Dearest” may be King’s touchstones for mediocre movie-making, but it was “The Godfather: Part III” that drew most of his ire in the aforementioned “Kill Bill” analysis. He first praised Francis Ford Coppola’s “Dementia 13”: a low-budget project filmed in just nine days that properly launched the director’s career.

“Many years later, Coppola spent at least a thousand times what he spent on ‘Dementia 13’ to make the last of the ‘Godfather’ movies,” King wrote of the contrast between the projects. “The film is opulent, incoherent, and boring. ‘The Godfather Part III’ is a movie that doesn’t matter. The difference? One has heart, soul, and the crazy enthusiasm of youth. The other is the work of a talented man who has either used all his talent up or is saving what’s left for another day.”

“The Dark Tower” (2017)

Kate Erbland called the first adaptation attempt for King’s eight-book magnum opus a “disaster of a film,” giving 2017’s “The Dark Tower” a dismal D+ in her review for IndieWire. The Nikolaj Arcel-directed film, starring Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey, had heaps of problems. But for King (via Entertainment Weekly), it boils down to its PG-13 rating — a decision he said “lost a lot of the toughness” in his gunslinging sci-fi source material — and the overstuffed nature of fitting 4,000 pages into a tidy running time.

“I thought to myself, ‘Well, people are going to be really puzzled by this,’ and they were,” King said of the script, which begins roughly halfway through the books. “So there was some of that problem, too.” Horror heavyweight Mike Flanagan will attempt an adaptation next in a TV series in development at Netflix.

“The Shining” (1980)

“The Shining” is easily King’s most famous adaptation disappointment, in no small part because Stanley Kubrick’s take on the Overlook Hotel is widely regarded as a masterpiece — and by default, remains the best known telling of King’s story. The author has complained about everything from Jack Nicholson’s performance to the misogynistic tweaks made to the character of Wendy Torrance (played by Shelley Duvall under infamously bad working conditions). 

“I think ‘The Shining’ is a beautiful film and it looks terrific and as I’ve said before, it’s like a big, beautiful Cadillac with no engine inside it,” King once told Deadline. “In that sense, when it opened, a lot of the reviews weren’t very favorable and I was one of those reviewers. I kept my mouth shut at the time, but I didn’t care for it much.” 

“Firestarter” (1984)

Asked broadly about filmmakers’ varying takes on his work by American Film Magazine in 1986 (via Slash Film), King called out the Drew Barrymore-starring commercial success “Firestarter.” 

“‘Firestarter’ is one of the worst of the bunch, even though in terms of story it’s very close to the original,” King said. “But it’s flavorless; it’s like cafeteria mashed potatoes. There are things that happen in terms of special effects in that movie that make no sense to me whatsoever. Why this kid’s hair blows every time she starts fires is totally beyond my understanding. I never got a satisfactory answer when I saw the rough cut. By that time, [producer Dino De Laurentis] was regularly asking me for input. Sometimes he’d take it.”

King continued to complain about lead David Keith (“My wife said that he has stupid eyes…”) and noted that Martin Sheen had repeated his performance from “The Dead Zone,” perhaps unwittingly. “That’s all there is; it’s the same character exactly,” he said.

The Twilight Saga (2008-2012)

Speaking with The Guardian in 2013 (aka the afterglow of the Twilight craze), King took swings at three of his literary contemporaries. He first critiqued Stephenie Meyer’s ability to craft a fantasy world rooted in human emotion. 

“I read ‘Twilight’ and didn’t feel any urge to go on with her,” King said of the seminal Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson work. He continued, arguing the love story should’ve been deeper before describing the film as “tweenager porn.” (Intriguing words from the man behind the infamous “It” orgy, to be sure.) 

“The Hunger Games” (2012)

In the same 2013 interview, King shared his distate for Suzanne Collins’ dystopian YA series. The author likened Collins’ work to his own, noting the similarities between “The Hunger Games” and 1982’s “The Running Man.” 

“I read ‘The Hunger Games’ and didn’t feel an urge to go on,” King said. “It’s not unlike ‘The Running Man,’ which is about a game where people are actually killed and people are watching: a satire on reality TV.”

Notably, King had previously complimented Collins’ work in a 2008 piece written for Entertainment Weekly. Some of his comments were cheekily disparaging (“Gale is smoldering. Says so right on page 14.”) But overall, the author praised Collins’ writing and said he was eager for new installments. Evidently, that enthusiasm did not last.

“Fifty Shades of Grey” (2015)

Rounding out King’s comments on popular 2013 authors, the novelist told The Guardian he was not a fan of E. L. James’ “Fifty Shades of Grey.” The film adaptation, starring Dakota Johnson and Jamie Dornan, was still in production at the time. But considering the faithful nature of the major movie franchise, it’s probably safe to say King hasn’t ever — and won’t ever — see it. 

“I read ‘Fifty Shades Of Grey’ and felt no urge to go on,” King repeated, before expanding on his confusion about the book’s reputation in popular culture. “They call it ‘mommy porn,’ but it’s not really ‘mommy porn.’ It is highly charged, sexually driven fiction for women who are, say, between 18 and 25.” 

“The Tommyknockers” (1993)

A critic true to his high standards, King has freely shared which of his own books he’s soured on over the years. Although it’s a miniseries (clocking in at just over three hours), 1993’s “The Tommyknockers” joins King’s list of vexing adaptations: written at the height of his battle with addiction.

“‘The Tommyknockers’ is an awful book,” King told Rolling Stone in 2014. “That was the last one I wrote before I cleaned up my act. And I’ve thought about it a lot lately and said to myself, ‘There’s really a good book in here, underneath all the sort of spurious energy that cocaine provides, and I ought to go back.’ The book is about 700 pages long, and I’m thinking, ‘There’s probably a good 350-page novel in there.’” ABC’s TV adaptation was panned upon release.

“Dreamcatcher” (2003)

Another of King’s self-disappointments is “Dreamcatcher”: the novel he wrote following a devastating accident that nearly lost the author his leg in 1999. (King was struck from behind by an out-of-control vehicle, which he later purchased and had destroyed reportedly out of concern that fans would want it.) 

“I don’t like ‘Dreamcatcher’ very much,” King told Rolling Stone in the same 2014 interview discussing “The Tommyknockers.” “‘Dreamcatcher’ was written after the accident. I was using a lot of Oxycontin for pain. And I couldn’t work on a computer back then because it hurt too much to sit in that position. So I wrote the whole thing longhand. And I was pretty stoned when I wrote it, because of the Oxy, and that’s another book that shows the drugs at work.” 

The work was soon adapted by director Lawrence Kasdan in a 2003 film starring Damian Lewis, Thomas Jane, Morgan Freeman, Jason Lee, Timothy Olyphant, and more. It was ridiculed upon release and barely made back its budget at the box office. 

“The Lawnmower Man” (1992)

Does Brett Leonard’s “The Lawnmower Man” even count as a King adaptation? The author didn’t think so, and neither did the judge who awarded him $2.5 million in damages as part of a 1993 settlement related to the film’s marketing. King argued the Pierce Brosnan-starring sci-fi horror was so derivative from his short story that the author should be allowed to pull his name from the title. Aside from an unauthorized home release of “Stephen King’s Lawnmower Man” by New Line — a spectacularly bad move that landed the studio in even more hot water — the 1992 sci-fi flick now bears only one (understated) credit for King.

“The Running Man” (1987)

Starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, “The Running Man” is another so-called adaptation that wildly deviates from King’s words. Yes, it still involves the central concept of disenfranchised people entering a “Most Dangerous Game”-style survival competition to better their lives in a dystopian future. But pretty much everything else about this action flick, from the plot points to the overly slick visual effects, is wrong for King’s intent. In “On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft” (h/t SlashFilm), King specifically called out Schwarzenegger’s casting as a bizarre misstep. “Baby Driver” director Edgar Wright will attempt to adapt the material next.

“The Last House on the Left” (1972)

In a ranking of his favorite films from 2009 for Entertainment Weekly, King praised director Dennis Iliadis’s remake of “The Last House on the Left.” He soundly rejected the Wes Craven original in his commentary, describing the filmmaker’s controversial directorial debut as a “crapfest.” The 1972 rape revenge exploitation flick is notorious for its intense violence and cruel bursts of humor, as well as the alleged abuse faced by starring actress Sandra Peabody on set.