Every Stephen King Book That Needs an Adaptation, Ranked

One writer set out to count which Stephen King novels still haven’t been adapted and found the answer more complicated than expected. Some works are obvious adaptations—Salem’s Lot, The Stand and Pet Sematary have all been brought to screen—while The Dark Tower only kind of exists onscreen and mainly lines up with The Gunslinger, leaving the rest of that cycle effectively unadapted.

If the Dark Tower books were handled as one long multi-season project, several otherwise unadapted novels would be absorbed into a single epic adaptation. Grouping the unadapted Dark Tower volumes together and imagining the Gwendy books as one adaptation produces a total of 22 unadapted stories, not counting novellas or short stories.

Separating out Gwendy and Dark Tower raises the count to 29 of 66 novels without film or miniseries versions, a higher number than many might expect. A fair share of those titles are recent and could still be adapted in time.

stephen king, dark tower, gwendy, the stand, salem's lot, pet sematary, the gunslinger, unadapted novels, adaptation count, miniseries