Stephen King

"I love my life and my wife and kids, but I've always been somewhat quasi-suicidal, constantly wanting to push things past the edge."

—Stephen King in Haunted Heart: The Biography of Stephen King by Lisa Rogak, to be published by JR Books on May 16. Among the revelations from the "King of Horror": many of his books were written in cocaine-fueled, alcohol-soaked, cigarette-fumed (two packs a day!) jags in which he would type while sitting in pools of blood.

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Coulrophobics (those with a clown phobia), beware: That freaky clown from Stephen King's IT is back — and this time on the big screen instead of in an ABC mini-series. Warner Bros. plans to adapt King's novel for film and has hired Dave Kajganich to make his directorial debut with the scary movie.

The story "centers on seven children in a small Maine town who confront the source of a series of murders in 1958 and again in 1985, when the cycle begins again."

Yikes — I'm not sure I can go through this again! Did you see the IT miniseries back in the day? Do you have that bright orange hair and terrifying clowny face of Pennywise seared into your brain, too?


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'Tis the season (and now the day!) to be scared out of your mind! While some people might be headed out to party the night away, many folks will get together to watch terrifying movies tonight. Of course, what scares people in movies varies from person to person. The suspense of a movie like Psycho turns some into a ball of nerves. For others, the idea of being possessed by a demonic spirit, as in the classic scary movie The Exorcist, will do the trick.

Personally, I still feel a chill down my spine when I think of the creepy, snowed-in hotel in Stephen King's The Shining and I'd prefer to not even talk about 28 Days Later because it was too traumatizing. Now it's your turn: What is hands-down the scariest movie you've ever seen?

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Lots of intriguing movie news coming out of Hollywood today:

• Kevin Spacey will star in the indie film Shrink as a depressed therapist who likes to ah, partake of the ganja. (A pot-smoking therapist? That sounds familiar.) His clients in the movie will include "Hollywood characters" like Robin Williams, Keke Palmer, Laura Ramsey and Gore Vidal, among others.
• Columbia and Sam Raimi will team up together again after their Spider-Man ventures for yet another adaptation of a Dennis Lehane novel. Lehane's books make excellent screenplays, apparently, as Mystic River, Gone Baby Gone and the upcoming DiCaprio-Scorsese project Shutter Island have all been adapted. Next up, Raimi will direct a film version of The Given Day, which follows Boston cops in 1919.
• Speaking of adaptations, the rights to an as-yet-unpublished Stephen King novella Throttle — which he wrote with his son Joe Hill — have already been optioned. The story is about "father-son members of a motorcycle gang that's chased through the desert by an 18-wheel tanker truck." The novella will be a part of a 2009 anthology dedicated to I Am Legend author Richard Matheson.

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Who knew Stephen King and John Mellencamp had anything in common, much less a desire to write a Broadway musical together? Not I, but apparently it's true, and the two men are collaborating on a musical theater project, scheduled to debut in April 2009, titled Ghost Brothers of Darkland County.

The story follows the legend that grows out of the tragic death of two brothers and a girl in the fictional town of Lake Belle Reve, Miss. The basic musical idea was originally Mellencamp's. He knew he needed a writer to help bring it to the stage and quickly thought of King.

While audiences have seen ghosts and gore on stage before (think Sweeney Todd) spokespeople for the production say this is a touching tale — more Shawshank Redemption and Stand By Me, less Carrie.

What do you guys think? Discuss.

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Happy 2008 and welcome to BuzzSugar's monthly must-haves, where I show off a handful of the things I'm most looking forward to watching, buying, renting and reading. I'm hoping to start the new year off right with the following goodies.

To see why these six things are at the top of my list, just read more