[ad_1]
Translating the horrors of Stephen King’s imagination into visual media has a long history of ups and downs. The best king movies and TV shows have constantly fueled nightmares for decades – from the rabid fear party that is Cujoto the human spider’s nest in Mist — but we’ve also seen plenty of adaptations that not only aren’t scary, but are laughable in their efforts.
With that in mind, and knowing how unpredictable artificial intelligence can be, one might wonder if computers would be up to the task of translating the terror of the beloved author…but new evidence coming directly from King suggests they can.
AI art generators are all the rage on the internet right now, with people using programs like DALL-E 2 and Midjourney to create art with all sorts of outrageous prompts, and Stephen King recently got in on the fun. The author shared on Twitter that he asked a “technical friend” to use unspecified software to “put Pennywise on a bike”, and the end result was arguably exactly what was hoped for:
This was done by an AI bot. I asked my tech friend Jake to put Pennywise on a bike and it came out. pic.twitter.com/J5oAI3TozqAugust 20, 2022
With all due respect to Tim Curry and Bill Skarsgård (not to mention all the genius artists who helped turn actors into Stephen King’s most gruesome monster)…shit. There are eerie valley vibes to it thanks to his face that isn’t quite a face, and the surreal distortion of the whole image only adds to the creepiness. The scale of the red balloon is also the icing on the cake, attached to a basket filled with who knows what. It’s a chilling image that would fit in an illustrated edition of THIS.
On that note, I wonder why we haven’t yet seen a comic book adaptation of Stephen King’s 1986 horror epic. There have been a number of King books that have been recreated in the medium, including The stall, The dark tower series and sleeping beauties, and there have even been comics made from short stories “The Lawnmower Man” and “N.” And yet despite the fact that THIS is arguably the author’s most popular work, material has yet to be taken down this path.
For now, fans can certainly be satisfied with the adaptations of THIS that we have seen, because both the 1990 miniseries and 2017/2019’s feature duology are both excellent renditions of the source material. Constant readers can also cross their fingers that we can see the developing a prequel series Welcome to Derby reunite – although this show was first announced in March as an HBO Max project, and its status is unclear amidst all the chaos going on right now with the streaming service.
Those looking to watch the THIS adaptations will find the miniseries and both movies available with a HBO Max Subscriptionalthough 2017 THIS is also now watchable with a Netflix subscription. You can follow all the King adaptations in progress with our Upcoming Stephen King Movies and TV Guideand learn about the author’s long history of work on the big and small screen by checking out my weekly Adaptation of Stephen King’s Column.