THE REGULATORS: A 1990’s Stephen King Bestseller is Set to Get a Film Adaptation

The Regulators To Get Film Adaptation

Bestselling author Stephen King is having a movie made based on his immensely popular mid-1990’s story titled, The Regulators.

It was a great Western horror story and now it’s getting a film version from the company, Bohemia Group. Originally written under the other “pen name” King used to use, Richard Bachman, the idea is an interesting one. Set on Poplar Street somewhere in Ohio, several vehicles of “regulators” arrive to murder people who come out on to the streets. The story also revolves around a creature who inhabits an autistic boy’s body which creates chaos amidst the horror. It’s a creative premise to be certain.

George Cowan will be adapting the bestseller to the screen. King is very happy that this movie is coming to the screen. Of the original story, Kirkus Reviews wrote, “Bachman gooses his cast with forced vulgarity and dumb jokes…” That may not sound like the best praise but it’s actually enough of an endorsement (coming from the almost always critical Kirkus) to have helped secure many readers of the original work the new film will be based on.

King is now 75 years old. He’s had his share of hits and misses from a cinematic standpoint but is, hands-down, for lack of a better word, the “king” of the world of horrific, entertaining, well-written literature. He’s seemingly not the best judge of movies (despite a stint as a film writer for Entertainment Weekly at one point in his career), unfortunately, as he recently deemed the critically trashed Firestarter remake as one of the better adaptations of his work. Moviegoers and critics thought it was one of his worst film adaptations, however, with the movie achieving a notoriously low “C-” CinemaScore grade.

To me, The Regulators sounds like something along the lines of a more supernatural variation of The Purge. It is going to be a big screen film that is currently in the works, according to Deadline.

King’s biggest successes in terms of movie adaptations based on his work were arguably the 1990’s movies Misery (for which Kathy Bates won a Best Actress Oscar), The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile. In the 1980’s, King adaptations were a mixed bag with projects ranging from the Stanley Kubrick much adored The Shining to the clever possessed car thriller, Christine, to the awful truck movie, Maximum Overdrive.

King also wrote (as Bachman) the story which was the basis for the horrible terror fest, Thinner. King was never known for writing a great screenplay but his prose in his stories and books is absolutely phenomenal making his success easy to comprehend. Whether he was known for his written word as Bachman or King, he was always (and still is) one of our most prolific authors and all eyes will be on The Regulators when it makes its way to theaters. No release date has been announced as of yet.

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