Four of the Best Stephen King Adaptions of All Time Just Arrived to the Same Streaming Service

Stephen King has inspired Hollywood for decades now, with dozens of films and TV shows adapted from his books. Coming off a major year for the Master of Horror that saw movies like The Monkey, The Life of Chuck, and The Long Walk hit theaters and the series It: Welcome to Derry debut, fans can now stream four of the best King adaptations of all time after they started streaming on the same platform.

King fans will want to make sure they have a Peacock subscription this January. The NBCUniversal streamer is now the streaming home of four great King adaptations after The Green Mile, Misery, The Shawshank Redemption, and The Shining arrived on the platform on January 1st. The four movies were released across a span of two decades stretching between the ‘80s and ‘90s and are regarded as some of the best takes on King’s work. Given the constantly shifting landscape of streaming, it’s unclear just how long the movies will be available to stream on Peacock.

The Shining Is One of the Most Controversial Stephen King Adaptations

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The Shining is widely regarded as one of the best Stephen King adaptations. Released during a standout decade for big screen adaptations of King’s works – Cujo, Firestarter, and Stand By Me also premiered in the ‘80s – Kubrick’s take on King’s 1977 novel set the gold standard for psychological horror and atmospheric dread to become one of the greatest horror films ever made, but it wasn’t without some controversy.

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Despite topping numerous “best of” lists and holding a “Certified Fresh” Rotten Tomatoes critics score of 84%, making it one of the highest-rated adaptations of his novels, King famously disliked the movie, previously admitting that he was “deeply disappointed in the end result.” The author called the movie a “failure” and “a maddening, perverse, and disappointing film” that he likened to “a great big beautiful Cadillac with no motor inside.” Although King has admitted that The Shining is a well-made film, he has stated that Kubrick’s take on his novel lacks the emotional warmth of his book and transforms the story from a tragedy about a man struggling with alcoholism and family into a cold, stylistic piece about a psychopath.

King has spoken much more highly of two other projects inspired by his The Shining book – the 1996 The Shining miniseries, for which he was heavily involved in the production of, and Mike Flanagan’s Doctor Sleep, a sequel to The Shining based on King’s 2013 novel of the same name.

What’s New on Peacock?

The four new-to-Peacock Stephen King movies aren’t the only films freshly streaming on Peacock. The NBCUniversal streamer grew its film library by dozens of titles on January 1st with additions like The Da Vinci Code, House of Gucci, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, The Maze Runner, and The Terminator. Later this month, Peacock will add The Hunger Games franchise (January 14th), Twisters (January 15th), and Jurassic World (January 16th), giving subscribers plenty of new can’t-miss streaming options.

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