Stephen King's Surprising Pick For His Favorite TV Adaptation Of His Work

Stephen King's writing has been adapted dozens of times over the years, with mixed results; some of them are great, but some of them are terrible (we'd say the most recent one, CBS All Access' take on The Stand, is somewhere in the middle). But the legendary author's favorite TV version of his work may surprise you. It's not, technically speaking, actually an adaptation at all. In a recent interview with the New York Times, King said his favorite TV project is Storm of the Century, a three-part horror miniseries for which he wrote an original script that aired on ABC in 1999.

"That is my absolute favorite of all of them," King said. "I loved Colm Feore as Linoge, and I loved the story," King said. "They filmed it in Southwest Harbor in Maine in the wintertime and they got the snow, so you get the sense of this awesome blizzard and the people trapped in it. They did a terrific job."

Storm of the Century tells the story of an isolated community on Little Tall Island off the coast of Maine, as its members brace for a terrible blizzard that's about to cut them off from the mainland. Right before the storm hits, a mysterious man named Andre Linoge (Colm Feore) appears, and he somehow seems to know everyone in town's deepest, darkest secrets, which threatens to tear the tight-knit community apart — if neither he nor the storm kill them all first. 

The only way to make him stop is to do what he says: "Give me what I want, and I'll go away." And it falls to local constable Mike Anderson (Timothy Daly) to figure out his sinister desire.

King conceived of Storm of the Century as a "novel for television," and when he started writing it, he wasn't sure if it should be a novel or a screenplay. More than most of the other King movies or TV shows — even ones he adapted himself — it really feels like a King novel in the execution of its plot, tone, and characterization.

Storm of the Century was directed by Craig R. Baxley, who went on to direct several other Stephen King TV projects, including Rose Red and Kingdom Hospital, but none of them were as creatively successful as the first.

Unfortunately, Storm of the Century is not currently available to buy digitally or stream, but it is available to purchase on DVD.