King on Screen is a documentary about Stephen King film adaptations. I’ve read a lot of King and seen most of the adaptations so I hit play thinking I already knew everything a doc could tell me. And I wasn’t entirely wrong, but the strength of the film is in the interviews more than the factoids.

We don’t get a Stephen King sit-down… maybe because he wouldn’t grant one or maybe because they wanted the directors and screenwriters to do the talking. And that was a fine approach… though I’d have loved to hear what King thought about each film. But we do get Frank Darabont, Mike Flanagan, Greg Nicotero, Mick Garris, Vincenzo Natali, Tom Holland, and more.

And some of their stories are interesting. A lot of behind-the-scenes and adaptation talk but also their experience growing up reading King too young, their experience with past adaptations, and what it was like to film their most famous movies.

It’s hardly a perfect though. It becomes a Making of The Green Mile for awhile, that film taking up a decent portion of the doc. It tells us that King didn’t like Kubrick’s adaptation of The Shining… which if you exist in the realm of movies, you already knew. It takes a detour about Night of the Living Dead… which ain’t a Stephen King story (it ties it into King by talking about his collaboration with Romero on Creepshow).

The doc also largely only talks about the good films and ignores the bad adaptations. I would have loved to hear about The Lawnmower Man which is so tangential to King’s short story, he sued. Or how The Running Man was turned into an Arnold vehicle. But probably getting those interviews would have been tough.

So it’s a mixed documentary for me. I didn’t learn much but I did enjoy the interviews. Some of the philosophizing over King as a writer was a bit trite and they both did and did not cover enough material. But it’s still worth it for the interviews if that interests you.

Score: 82