10 Stephen King Movie Adaptations That Stephen King Hated
8. The Lawnmower Man
Stephen King movies were reaching epidemic proportions by 1992, and The Lawnmower Man proudly displayed posters with the master’s name on them. The issue there was that it bore such little resemblance to his story, he ended up suing New Line Cinema to remove his name from it.
King’s short story has a man hiring a mysterious guy to mow his lawn, who turns out to be a goat man who eats grass and worships Pan; in the end, he sacrifices the man to his god. It’s utterly bonkers, but the movie has a hunky professor – played by pre-Bond Pierce Brosnon – making a mentally disabled lawnmower man smarter through VR experiments. He soon evolves into a new lifeform who is intent on becoming a cyberspace god, so Brosnan has to stop him.
Outside of some character names and a lawnmower, the movie has nothing to do with the story at all. King doesn’t even recognise it as an adaption of his work, and when New Line dragged their feet removing his name he sued them again.