Stephen King

I'd like to take a break from the horrors of Temple to talk about a good author, Stephen King specifically. With news that the man has two adaptations of his work on the way ("It" and "The Dark Tower"), and a roller-coaster history of adaptations of his work, one wonders one thing:
Why isn't Hollywood doing the Stephen King expanded universe?

There are now forced efforts by studios to emulate the success of the Marvel Studios movies, notably by the Warner Brothers DC Cinematic Universe and the roster of movies flying out, but also in smaller, unusual targets such as the reboot of "The Mummy" which plans to include other classic horror film monsters (I believe that Russell Crowe will be playing Dr Jekyll and not, unfortunately, Mr. Knife from "Man with the Iron Fists")

But you can call him Jack...

Or the upcoming Robin Hood movie done by Guy Ritchie, which is rumoured to be setting the scene for a series of spin offs involving the various Merry Men. Whilst this is a terrible idea in theory, playing catch-up with Marvel and attempting to squeeze more money out of things, you could have a laugh with it: Maybe make a romantic comedy called "Red Letter Day", where Will Scarlet tries to win over a lady of high society by pretending to be a nobleman, with John Cussack as Will Scarlet.

Pictured: Actual scene

Or maybe the buddy cop adventures of Much the Miller's Son and Alan-a-Dale as they try to find fame and fortune in the big city whilst solving crimes, becoming a well-regarded detective agency but always struggling to make ends meet and hating having to be room mates. Working title:
"Much a-Dale about Nothing."

There are also further Star Wars movie spin offs on the horizon, such as the Han Solo movie, the upcoming "Rogue One" and a rumoured Boba Fett movie.
There are also rumours of a crossover between "Sinister" and "Insidious" (Insinister?) despite "Sinister 2" being worse than rabies on the scrotum and previous horror film crossovers ("Freddie Versus Jason" and "Alien Versus Predator") being both awful and not too successful.

But whilst these cynical attempts at expanded universes are bound to fail, why not actually do something with the latter idea? It's a problem of movies, but particularly horror films, that studios are not looking for good films, but the next big franchise. They want the next toy, the big monster they can plaster over things to "scare people" or the next superhero.
Since studios want a big poster/franchise monster, why not Stephen King's monsters?
He has been doing the expanded universe thing for a long, long time now. It's pretty well known that most of his novels have been set in Derry, Maine, which must be the unluckiest town since Swindon. Though there was a distinct ending to the town's chaos and depravity (more on that soon), almost all of his novels set there could feasibly happen in the same universe, due to the varying scale, tone, genre and (in a common but not unwarranted criticism) similar monsters/threats.
If you take short stories into account as well, there's a wealth of material there ripe for the picking (as told by the various movies and series made from the works) and King's nothing if not prolific. I love a bit of Stephen King, I have to admit, and studios love money/franchises.
So this would be the match for them. Why not? They're milking everything else dry, and with the aforementioned Dark Tower movie, it's only a matter of time.

Part One

To start with you'd have to keep it small scale, maybe make a simple one of his stories, set in Derry, Maine. You couldn't choose many of the later ones, and you couldn't use "Cujo", because one of the major characters of "Cujo" (spoiler, he dies) is a character in "The Dead Zone" and is mentioned in other works.

"Christine" works. John Carpenter already made a great adaptation of "Christine". For the unfamiliar, here is the set-up:
Possessed car is bought from old man by kid.
Done, easy. The car in the novel is possessed by the spirits of Roland LeBay's dead wife and daughter, and whoever owns/drives it begins to take on the man's vile personality. It's a pretty good novel, focusing on the corruption and deterioration of a young man, possessed by an evil force, which fights for his soul alongside the good people in its life. It'd make an interesting character story, and would help introduce the psychological and supernatural tones of King's work. The forces which cause the car to do this are only ever hinted at, never named, leading to set-up for the town of Derry itself. Your protagonists are normal people, they have their own lives, thus the "small town" can be established. You could drop hints throughout the film to a strange case going on alongside it, something weird in the neighbouring town, leading to the events of...

This novel was also adapted into a film, called "Silver Bullet" in the 80s, like "Christine". It's not a John Carpenter movie, but it's still pretty fun, even just for Gary Busey. This one would be a similar sort of tone to "Christine", where the former was a love story with strange goings on, this being a tale of a Marty Coslaw, a disabled boy, and his family's discomfort being around him, save for his cool uncle, Al, who is convinced that the string of brutal, horrific killings in the town are the result of a werewolf...
It's a pretty simple set-up, but tackled very well, in a typical King fashion. It has the town's loveable residents, each with their own quirks and lives and back-stories, facing off against this mythical creature as it stalks and murders them. Nobody wants to believe it, save this boy in the wheelchair, until it's too late. The protagonist is a positive role-model for disabled characters and his relationship with Al is sweet, and touching, and sets the tone for many character interactions in other books. Also, I imagined the town of Tarker's Mill as being very closeby to the town of...

Again, made into an okay movie. This one is probably one of the more famous Stephen King novels. The set-up is simple: Dr Louis Creed and his family move to Maine (see...) when he gets a job at their university, where they discover an old cemetery  tucked away in the woods behind their house, which (he is reliably informed by his loveable old neighbour Jud) was used by kids to bury their pets. Louis' wife Rachel is uncomfortable living there, naturally, especially since it means that she will have to discuss the subject of death with their son Gage. When their cat is run over and Gage is upset beyond belief, Jud takes Louis to "the real cemetrary" where he tells him to bury the cat...

The premise is nice, and it focuses on a small group of characters (Dr Creed, Rachel, Jud and Gage) without being part of the "small town" directly, though Jud grew up in such a town (Ludlow in this case) and could thus have stories or references to things such as Pennywise the Clown (from "It", my favourite Stephen King novel which itself contains references to many, many things in the King canon), the events of the Overlook Hotel in "The Shining" and a variety of other things, including the aforementioned Cycle of the Werewolf.
This is where things could also get interesting. In the novel, Dr Creed is visited by the spirit of one of his dead students, who warns him of the cemetery and its purposes. This is basically a simple haunting/visitation in the novel, but you could tie it in to the "Breaker" myths of the world (a key point of "The Dark Tower", referenced in "The Shining", "Insomnia", arguably in "The Dead Zone",  "Dr Sleep", "Everything's Eventual" and somewhat used in "Firestarter") by making the visitation something connected with Dr Creed and his "gift".
Breakers are those with psychic gifts, who are sought by dark forces who enslave them and put them to work for nefarious purposes in the events of "The Dark Tower" which I shall not get into here...
But they have to be introduced sooner or later, so why not here? In addition, "The Shop" could make their first appearance in these circumstances, though how would be strange.

See, that was one of the big problems I had with "The Shop", the sinister government agency who pop up in "Everything's Eventual", "Firestarter" and "Tommyknockers". They're supposed to be this big agency with funding and goals, but we never really see them go anywhere after those books. It's kind of a frustrating thing.

I'll leave it there for now, as we're about to get onto the big ones: "It", "The Dead Zone", "Firestarter" and "Needful Things" to name but four.

To be continued in further installments.