10 Stephen King Film Remakes Needed To Erase The Terrible Originals

5. Riding The Bullet

What makes this movie based on Stephen King's novella ripe for a remake isn't the fact that it was garbage, though it most certainly was. Hell, it's not even the fact that David Arquette plays an important role in it. It's that barely anyone outside of King's faithful have heard of it, which is a shame because beneath the hollowly macabre-sounding plot lies a lingering, internalized sadness that the original completely fumbled. Jonathan Jackson (Tuck Everlasting... no, seriously) plays Alan, a death-obsessed teenager who, following a failed suicide attempt, sets out to hitchhike one hundred miles to visit his dying mother. Along the way, he meets a cast of odd characters, including Arquette as a ghost with his head sewed back on after the decapitation that cost him his life. The movie doesn't shy away from heavy-handed melodrama, which proves to be its downfall. It's dark for the sake of being dark. And probably for the sake of throwing King's name onto a project and expecting a decent return. The fact that it only grossed a startlingly bad $134,711 in the U.S. reveals this to be more of a misfire than simple bad filmmaking. There is a chance for this story to have a second life as a more introspective character study and what impact exactly death has on us all. And even though he's already attached to another King remake with It, Cary Fukunaga is the type of talent well suited to the heady source material, which he proved on HBO's True Detective. In a couple of years, Tom Holland (The Impossible) could step in as Alan. Considering the majority of King's work is either excessively violent or outright terrifying, Riding the Bullet stands out as a uniquely intimate entry in the author's canon. Fun fact: the original novella was actually the first work ever released as a digital download.