Rare Stephen King Book Without An Adaptation Would Be One Of His Best-Ever TV Shows
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Published Jun 13, 2026, 11:30 AM EDT
Zach Moser has been writing for ScreenRant since 2022, covering movies, classic TV, and streaming TV. His areas of expertise cover a wide range of genres with a particular interest in horror and drama, and the conversations around the TV and film industry. When he's not covering the latest film releases or chronicling the latest season of a new show, he's writing humor pieces for McSweeney's Internet Tendency, Slackjaw, and Points In Case or working on short stories and his second novel.
One of Stephen King's late-period novels still doesn't have an adaptation, which is a shame, because it would make a killer TV show. There have been dozens of Stephen King adaptations over the years. The prolific horror author has always encouraged people to take a swing at his novels, novellas, and short stories, even if it means receiving his honest feedback afterward.
Since King first started getting short stories published in the '50s, and later novels in the '70s, rarely has a year gone by without a new King tale to delight and horrify. You could be a fan of his early work, the Carries, Cujos, and Miserys, and completely miss out on his new fiction, which he continues to release at a remarkable rate.
His newer books attract attention from showrunners and directors as much as his old stories, with The Outsider, The Institute, and Doctor Sleep just a handful of his 21st-century stories you can watch on screen. Still, there are some excellent novels that producers and showrunners have mistakenly overlooked, like 2017's Sleeping Beauties.
Sleeping Beauties is a co-authored story that King wrote with his son, Owen. The novel is set in the small, Appalachian town of Dooling, where a bizarre murder leads to the women in town suddenly being overcome with a sickness that lulls them into a deep sleep that they don't awake from. It's mysterious, bloody, and a lot of fun, and would make an excellent TV series.
Since then, there have been no updates about the project, and it seems to be languishing in production hell. Hopefully, someone picks it up sooner rather than later, because Sleeping Beauties would make for a fantastic mystery series that combines science fiction and small-town drama elements for something really thrilling.
Sleeping Beauties Is One Of Several King Family Collaborations
Credit: MovieStillsDB
Owen King is Stephen and Tabitha King's third son after Naomi and writer Joseph. Owen has produced several collections and novels, worked on graphic novels, and produced television shows. Sleeping Beauties is Owen's first and only collaboration with his father, but he did write the unproduced screenplay Fade Away with his brother in 2005.
Joseph, who writes under the name "Joe Hill", has worked a few times with his father. Joe and Stephen collaborated on the 2009 novella Throttle and the 2012 novella In the Tall Grass, which was adapted into a Netflix movie in 2019. Stephen also helped edit Joe's short story, "You Are Released", for the 2018 flight-themed horror anthology, Flight or Fright.
Sleeping Beauties Would Be Like Nothing Else On TV
Sleeping Beauties could prove to be a singular TV show if done right. In the series, the female and male cast are separated, a result of the strange sleep sickness and the sci-fi time shenanigans that the sleep results in. This would be a show where the main couples of the series would never interact.
Sleeping Beauties could have two plots, going side-by-side, one with an all-male cast, and one with an all-female cast, showing how society develops in different ways depending on which world we are in. It's not the worst idea I've ever heard for a science fiction series.
Credit: MovieStillsDB
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