Barbarian Star Justin Long Reacts to Stephen King's Praise of New Movie (Exclusive)
In a year filled with a lot of great original horror movies, the one that is keeping people talking is Zach Cregger's Barbarian. Now available to stream on HBO Max and previously a surprise hit at the box office, the new horror film's many twists and turns have had audiences guessing for months with newcomers as perplexed as people that saw it when it premiered. Among the many voices praising the film are none other than horror master Stephen King, who tweeted that the movie "blew him away" and was "Crazy GOOD!" Speaking with ComicBook.com about the film, we revealed King's praise to star Justin Long, who was taken aback by King's kind words.
"That makes me emotional," Long said, awestruck. "I grew up with Stephen King, I'm just the biggest fan, that's wild. I sometimes wonder if people I really admire have seen things I was in or are aware of me and it's just the fact that he saw me in something that I'm proud of is really um... man, I mean there's no higher praise then from somebody like that. That's wild. I love his work. I just it's such a huge part of my life as well."
From there the talk naturally went to King and his work, with Long telling us that the collection Different Seasons is his favorite, adding: "But God, I love Christine, I love Carrie, I just love his stuff so much. I have for years. I love the new IT movies. It was exciting to meet Bill Skarsgard (on Barbarian), I met Bill just one night because our stuff didn't really overlap. So he was leaving when I was just coming into Bulgaria, but I was such a fan of those movies."
Despite his extensive career, especially in genre movies, Long hasn't actually been a part of a Stephen King adaptation just yet. In our talk about King however the actor confirmed that at one point he was in talks for one adaptation, telling us: "I almost did an adaptation, it was one they haven't been able to do. It's about a guy who tries to quit smoking."
It sure seems like the title Long is referring to is "Quitters, Inc." the short story from Night Shift about a man whose attempts to stop smoking result in him taking on the help of a company with extreme methods. The story was previously adapted in the anthology horror movie Cat's Eye with James Woods in the lead role. To Long's point though, a feature-length adaptation of the story hasn't been made just yet, but maybe now it could happen.