Stephen King Calls Forgotten 25-Year-Old Miniseries His Finest Work for TV: ‘Absolute Favorite’

More than two hundred films and shows of varying quality have been released based on Stephen King 's novels. Many of them have long since become cinematic classics, such as The Shining, The Shawshank Redemption, Misery, and Carrie.

With such intense competition, it is no wonder that many adaptations have been forgotten – but not all of them deserve that.

Storm of the Century is The Hidden Gem Among King’s Adaptations

It's not hard to find hardcore King fans who would call the Storm of the Century miniseries one of the best adaptations of the author's work, but it's not really an adaptation.

At the time of its creation, Storm of the Century changed course and became not a novel but a screenplay. Perhaps this is why this show deserves a place in the list of the best (but unjustly forgotten) projects in the filmography of the King of Horror.

In the second half of the 90s, King already had some useful contacts in the TV industry, so the decision was taken after a few phone calls – having received the go-ahead from ABC to create a novel for television, King wrote the script in three months.

What Is Storm of the Century About?

Three episodes tell the story of a blizzard that hits the tiny island of Little Tall in Maine: people flee to the basement, the wind gets stronger, and the snow level rises. And soon yet another disaster strikes the hapless townspeople.

A strange man with a stick mystically punishes ordinary people for their small sins: envy, fornication, gossip and others. At the same time, King effectively weaves into the plot one of the most mysterious cases in history: the disappearance of the Roanoke Colony.

Storm of the Century Was an Ambitious Project

King chose the director for the project himself, after watching the TV movie Twilight Man that he had rented over the weekend and immediately calling its director, Craig R. Baxley.

Baxley was not intimidated by the scale of the work, and although the ABC series was one of the most ambitious television projects at the time ($2 million of the $33 million allocated by the network was spent on snow alone, made from potato flakes and scraps of plastic blown by giant fans), the director did an excellent job: the story of a mysterious stranger who terrifies the inhabitants of a small island during a storm took one of the most worthy places in King's filmography. The author himself appeared on the screen in a small cameo of a lawyer from a TV commercial.

Storm of the Century is King’s Personal Favorite

King himself calls Storm of the Century his best project for television:

“That is my absolute favorite of all of them. […] I loved the story. They filmed it in Southwest Harbor in Maine in the winter and they got the snow, so you get the sense of this awesome blizzard and the people trapped in it. They did a terrific job.”

The 1999 miniseries received excellent critical and audience reviews (the show currently has a Rotten Tomatoes rating of 83% from critics and 84% from viewers), but was soon undeservedly forgotten.

It's not clear what the reason is – whether it's a specific format (perhaps the creators should have split the three hour-and-a-half episodes into six forty-five-minute episodes), or the lack of big names. But either way, its legacy lives on: the plot of the popular video game Life is Strange, for example, is clearly inspired by the Storm of the Century.

Source: The New York Times