Stephen King Claims The Outsider Is One of the Best Adaptations of His Works

Earlier today HBO released the creepy new trailer for The Outsider, a new drama series based on the book by Stephen King. Despite King’s prolific writing career that spans over forty years now, the writer has a reputation for not enjoying adaptations of his work, some of which are rightfully derided. The most well known of these was King’s very public contempt for Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. With this new TV series though, King already has literally the highest praise possible for what’s to come in The Outsider, taking to Twitter to celebrate the drama.

In an uncharacteristic move, King called the new series “one of the best adaptations” of his work, writing that he hopes constant readers will watch it when it premieres. Even in a year that has had multiple high profile adaptations of King books, the author has seldom delivered a compliment of this magnitude especially before the series has debuted.

Earlier this year King drew little attention to the Pet Sematary remake by just calling it “Scary,” later saying that IT Chapter Two was “terrific” and “Pretty darn good,” and then calling Doctor Sleep “A hell of a good movie. And a hell of a scary one.” King hasn’t shied away from being blunt and honest about some of the poorly received adaptations of his work, calling Dreamcatcher a “train wreck,” bluntly saying “I could do without all the Children Of The Corn sequels,” and calling 1984’s Firestarter “One of the worst of the bunch.” HBO’s adaptation of The Outsider is set to premiere on January 12, 2020, and we’ll find out then how it holds up compared to King’s praise.

The Outsider stars Jason Bateman and Ben Mendelsohn and comes from Richard Price, who has previously worked on HBO’s The Wire and The Night Of, with the latest trailer for the series teasing the terror that is in store for audiences, in addition to the gripping cinematic style of the series.

The 10-episode series follows police detective Ralph Anderson (Ben Mendelsohn), as he sets out to investigate the mutilated body of 11-year-old Frankie Peterson found in the Georgia woods. The mysterious circumstances surrounding this horrifying crime leads Ralph, still grieving the recent death of his own son, to bring in unorthodox private investigator Holly Gibney (Cynthia Erivo), whose uncanny abilities he hopes will help explain the unexplainable.