Of the many, many impressive things about Stephen King’s career, one of the most remarkable is just how ridiculously prolific the guy is. He is a man who is fully dedicated to his craft, and it’s a dedication that has allowed him to publish at least one book every year since the late 1970s. He has well-earned his reputation as an endless font of imagination, and that makes it all the more comical that he comes across as a victim of his own muse in a reading of his new novel that just arrived online this week.
The author’s blunt honesty about his latest tome Never Flinch is the lead story of this new edition of The King Beat – but it’s just one of two headlines this week, as I’m also fascinated by the apparent King influences on Zach Cregger’s new movie Weapons, which just dropped its first trailer a few days ago. There’s a whole lot to discuss, so let’s dig in!
In A Reading Of His New Book Never Flinch, Stephen King Gets Super Honest About The Terror Of Writing A Plotted Novel
the dognapping case involving Lady Gaga, but instead of protecting a famous singer, Never Flinch will see its lead character by the side of a feminist activist who has been targeted by a stalker and wants Holly’s help figuring out what’s going on. Meanwhile, a parallel narrative will see her on a case looking for a revenge-minded serial killer, and from the way King talks about it, he didn’t exactly have a lot of fun building the mystery. While chuckling, the author says in the video:
I wanted to basically have a serial killer that his identity was masked, and Holly was gonna find out who it was at some point. But that was one strand of this terrible plotted novel that went on forever.
That’s not exactly the kind of language that one expects from an author promoting his upcoming book, but it speaks to the specialness of King. You can watch the full reading yourself in the video embed below:
Watch On
Never Flinch is now just a few weeks away from arriving in stores everywhere (specifically on May 27), and you can be sure that I’ll find opportunities to write about it in the coming weeks in future installments of The King Beat.
Watching The Trailer For Zach Cregger’s Weapons, I Can’t Help But Pick Up On Certain Stephen King Vibes
If you’re a regular reader of his column, you are already well aware that 2025 is a massive year for Stephen King adaptations. Osgood Perkins’ The Monkey was a success when it landed in theaters back in February, and before the end of the year, we’ll see the theatrical releases of Mike Flanagan’s The Life Of Chuck, Francis Lawrence’s The Long Walk, and Edgar Wright’s The Running Man in addition to the TV premieres of HBO’s IT: Welcome To Derry and MGM+’s The Institute. That’s a lot of King to digest… but that list doesn’t also include titles with some heavy King-esque vibes – and based on the trailer that was released this week, that includes writer/director Zach Cregger’s upcoming horror movie Weapons.
In the new movie from the filmmaker who brought us 2022’s Barbarian, Julia Garner stars as Justine, an elementary school teacher who finds herself at the center of a nightmare when all of the students and vanish from their homes. The fact that all the kids are in her class is the only thing that ties all of the disappearances together, and the preview suggests that the incident is only the start of a broader horror. With a terrific supporting cast that also includes Josh Brolin, Benedict Wong, Alden Ehrenreich and more, Weapons is based on an original screenplay by Cregger, but my Stephen King-obsessed mind can’t help but notice two links to the author’s work.
The first and most obvious detail is the noteworthy time of night in the trailer that all of the children disappear: 2:17am. That may seem like a perfectly random clock reading, but I will personally never see the number “217” and not instantly think of Room 217 – the most haunted portion of the Overlook Hotel in Stephen King’s The Shining (famously changed to Room 237 for Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 adaptation). I don’t suspect that Weapons will end up having any specific ties to The Shining, but I also can’t accept that the time was chosen totally at random.
More broadly, I also find myself mentally putting the plot of the film side-by-side with “Suffer The Little Children” – a short story that King first had published in 1972 before it was ultimately collected in the 1993 collection Nightmares & Dreamscapes. In the immensely disturbing tale, a third grade teacher comes to the horrific realization that the students in her class are no longer her students as they have all been replaced by evil doppelgängers. I won’t spoil the ending for those of you who haven’t read it, but it features one of the more fucked up conclusions in the entirety of the King canon. Hopefully things end up a tad bit better for Justine and her class when Weapons arrives in theaters on August 8.
That wraps up this week’s edition of The King Beat, but as always, I’ll be back here next Thursday on CinemaBlend with the latest news and insights into the world of Stephen King. In the meantime, you can explore everything that is going on with developing adaptations of the author’s work by checking out our Upcoming Stephen King Movies and TV guide.