Yet, not all of King’s tales translate seamlessly to the big screen. While his storytelling prowess is undeniable, some of his works venture into bizarre realms that might not resonate with mainstream audiences. Consequently, there are more lackluster King adaptations than successful ones. For every success like “The Dead Zone,” there’s a flop like “Sometimes They Come Back… For More.” And for every “Pet Sematary,” there’s a “Maximum Overdrive.”

King’s distinctive dialogue and sometimes erratic plotting can be both his strength and weakness. His ability to craft characters through their speech is unparalleled, and even if a book’s conclusion fizzles out, the journey often leaves readers haunted for weeks. However, when adapting his tales to film, these quirks can become obstacles. Some of his stories are too eccentric to become satisfying films, while others are too complex for anyone but his loyal fans. Here, we delve into five King stories that seem almost unfilmable.

Among King’s most disturbing stories is “Cain Rose Up,” found in his 1985 anthology “Skeleton Crew.” King had previously tackled the subject of school shootings in his 1977 novel “Rage,” written under his pseudonym Richard Bachman. That book, now out of print and arguably best left unadapted, features a school shooter as the protagonist, narrating his own horrific actions.

One of Stephen King’s most upsetting stories is “Cain Rose Up,” a short story that was included in his 1985 collection “Skeleton Crew.” He’d written about school shootings before, most notably in the 1977 book “Rage,” which was published under his “Richard Bachman” pseudonym. That book — out of print, and perhaps a Stephen King story that should not be adapted at all — features a school shooter as the protagonist, the first-person narrator recounting his terrible crime.

“Cain Rose Up,” on the other hand, is a short, quick tale told in a cool, dispassionate third person. It’s about Curt Garrish, a college student in his dorm after what seems to have been a particularly difficult exam. As fellow students vie for his attention, Garrish goes about the business of steadying himself; and then, in the closing moments of the story, begins firing his sniper rifle at people in the quad below.

It’s a deeply disturbing experience; we’ve just spoiled it here, but part of the story’s effectiveness is that you’re not quite sure what you’re reading until the very end. That’s a difficult sell for a film. Any adaptation of this story, then, would have to take significant liberties with its construction. “Cain Rose Up” is all about how it’s constructed, so it doesn’t seem worthwhile. Besides, Gus Van Sant’s brilliant (and misunderstood) thriller “Elephant” attempts a similar feat, and it’s unlikely any adaptation of “Cain Rose Up” would do it better.

Several times, Stephen King has written books meant to be read as companion pieces to one another. Both “Gerald’s Game” and “Dolores Claiborne” feature pivotal sequences set during the same eclipse, and the characters have odd visions of one another that don’t really make sense unless you’ve read the corresponding other book. “Dolores Claiborne” was turned into one of the most underrated King adaptations in 1995, but it wasn’t until Mike Flanagan’s excellent 2017 film “Gerald’s Game” that we got to see the other side of the story.

In 1996, King released “Desperation” under his own name and “The Regulators” as Richard Bachman. Both novels are about the same characters, but they exist in parallel universes, telling funhouse-mirror versions of the story. “Desperation,” about the characters trapped in a Western town, became a TV movie in 2006; it wasn’t great.

While Sam Peckinpah nearly adapted “The Regulators,” no one’s brought the raucous suburban horror story to screen yet. That’s because it’s a far weirder book, one that only works — inasmuch as it works at all — in written form. King draws a lot of his horror from childish fear; he asks for a certain amount of intentional buy-in. “The Regulators” involves a twisted, “Power Rangers”-esque league of interdimensional bad guys from a show called “MotoKops 2200,” and we have to imagine it’d be much harder to take them seriously on screen than it is to imagine a scary version for yourself while reading.

While Stephen King pumped out a lot of classics in his early years, his later output has occasionally been hit-or-miss. You won’t find anything newer than the 1990s on our list of the 10 scariest Stephen King books – with only one exception. “Revival,” which King released in 2014, might just be one of his scariest books of all time. It’s a sprawling story that plays out over the course of a lifetime, following a man named Jamie Morton from childhood to adulthood. Throughout his life, he encounters a traveling revival preacher named Charles Jacobs, a man who eventually claims the ability to harness a secret electricity in order to perform miracles.

King has experimented with Lovecraftian cosmic horror several times before, including concepts like “the Deadlights” from “It.” He hurtles headlong into bizarre territory with “Revival,” ultimately spinning a tale of madness so complete and all-encompassing that it makes his other work seem tame.

However, it’s so strange and unusual that it might just be impossible to adapt. It’s all about existential, gnawing dread, about peeling back the curtain that lies over the world and seeing something so awe-inspiring, so tremendous, so terrifying, that your sanity slips between your fingers forever. We can easily imagine that for ourselves as we read the book, but seeing it on the big screen would likely lose something, especially in an age of cynical audiences, where people are less willing to suspend their disbelief than ever.

Stephen King knows there have been some awful movie adaptations of his work. His opinions may differ than the critical consensus — he famously disliked Stanley Kubrick’s version of “The Shining,” after all — but on the whole, the guy seems to understand when certain things just don’t land the way he wanted them to. We have to imagine that he’d expect an adaptation of “Ur” to go the same way.

In 2009, King released the novella straight to Amazon Kindle. In fact, it’s about a Kindle — a pink one that slips through some crack in the multiverse into our own reality. The Kindle in “Ur” can look up information from other universes, providing insight on things beyond normal human comprehension. You can see why such a story might have appealed to King; that’s what good books are, after all — dispatches from another world — and the then-new Kindle must’ve seemed like a passport to anywhere.

When the Kindle debuted, King pushed back on fellow authors fretting about ebooks. “My definition of Kindle: a gadget with stories hiding inside it,” he told Entertainment Weekly. But if you were to adapt “Ur” now, though, it would be impossible to escape allegations that it’s just a glorified Amazon ad. E-readers are now ubiquitous; Amazon seems far more evil than it did in 2009; and literacy rates are declining. There would be just no way to tell this story on-screen without it seeming deeply silly, if not downright naive.

Any worthwhile adaptation of “The Dark Tower” would require a point where the Stephen King multiverse is explained to viewers, and that’s going to be a difficult sell on-screen. King’s magnum opus plays out across seven main novels, plus one more that takes place in the middle of the series. As the series goes on and the mythology gets more complex, King pulls in characters, events, settings, and concepts from across his entire oeuvre. There are crossovers with everything from iconic King novels like “It,” “The Stand,” and “‘Salem’s Lot,” to lesser-known works like “The Eyes of the Dragon” and “Black House.”

In later installments, characters even cross over into the real world. They encounter the author himself, becoming involved in a pivotal real-life incident where King was struck by a van and was close to death.

It’s such an expansive story — one that changes and morphs with each new installment — that adaptations seem doomed to failure right from the start. In 2017, a film starring Matthew McConaughey and Idris Elba threw the sprawling epic into a blender, adapting various elements that didn’t cohere into a compelling film. Next up at bat will be Mike Flanagan, who is creating a multi-season “Dark Tower” series for Amazon. If anyone can do it, it might be him; “Doctor Sleep” would’ve been on this list before Flanagan and Rebecca Ferguson made Rose the Hat so chilling in their 2019 film.