Are Stephen King films better than the books?

Rejoice, Snobs: The Book IS Better Than The Movie
The literary originals have higher ratings than the film adaptations 74 percent of the time. This recent piece claims books are usually better than their films versions.

This article reminded me of a claim that Stephen King films are better than his books. So I extracted the ratings from IMDB and Goodreads. I doubled the Goodreads ratings to make them out of 10.


I included miniseries. Carrie was made twice but I only included the original. The Langoliers, Maximum Overdrive, Lawnmower man and Secret garden seem not to have independent English language printed book versions.

 

The Shining is one of two films with a higher rating than the book. King famously hates the film

"Are you mystified by the cult that's grown around Kubrick's Shining?
I don't get it. But there are a lot of things that I don't get. But obviously people absolutely love it, and they don't understand why I don't. The book is hot, and the movie is cold; the book ends in fire, and the movie in ice."

 

To make this a fair test films and book would have to be graded on a curve. By what the average rating of each is. There is a good discussion on how to normalise the original comparison here. But I think this graph is enough to show Stephen King books are better than his films.

Less than 8% of King adaptations are rated higher compared to 26% usually for book adaptations. To get King to have the average quality of adaptations, sixish Stephen King Films being rated better than is books. This would require Dolores Claiborne, The Green Mile, Stand By Me, Misery and maybe Carrie to be much worse books or these already highly rated films to be much better. I am going to call this Myth Busted*, Stephen King adaptations are less successful than the average adaptation.

 

Title	Publication date	Pages	imdb	goodreads	good doubled
Carrie	April 5, 1974	199	7.4	3.89	7.78
'Salem's Lot	October 17, 1975	439	6.8	3.97	7.94
The Shining	January 28, 1977	447	8.4	4.12	8.24
The Stand	Sep-78	823	7.3	4.32	8.64
The Dead Zone	Aug-79	428	7.3	3.88	7.76
Firestarter	September 29, 1980	426	6	3.8	7.6
Cujo	September 8, 1981	319	6	3.61	7.22
The Running Man	May-82	219	6.6	3.74	7.48
Christine	April 29, 1983	526	6.6	3.69	7.38
Pet Sematary	November 14, 1983	374	6.6	3.86	7.72
Thinner	November 19, 1984	309	5.7	3.6	7.2
It	September 15, 1986	1138	6.9	4.12	8.24
Misery	June 8, 1987	310	7.8	4.06	8.12
The Tommyknockers	November 10, 1987	558	5.4	3.42	6.84
The Dark Half	October 20, 1989	431	5.9	3.71	7.42
Needful Things	Oct-91	690	6.2	3.84	7.68
Dolores Claiborne	Nov-92	305	7.4	3.76	7.52
The Green Mile	March–August 1996	400	8.5	4.39	8.78
Bag of Bones	September 22, 1998	529	5.8	3.84	7.68
Dreamcatcher	March 20, 2001	620	5.5	3.53	7.06
Under the Dome	November 10, 2009	1074	6.8	3.89	7.78
Shawshank Redemption	1982	181	9.3	4.51	9.02
Stand by me	1982	80	8.1	4.25	8.5
The Mist	1983	230	7.2	3.88	7.76
Apt Pupil	1983	179	6.7	3.8	7.7
Hearts in Atlantis	2000	640	6.9	3.77	7.54

   
 mydata = read.csv("King.csv")  
 library(ggplot2)  
 p1 <- ggplot(mydata, aes(x = good.doubled, y = imdb))  
 p1 <- p1 + geom_abline(intercept=0, slope=1)  
 p1 <- p1 + geom_point(shape=1)  
 p1 <- p1 + ylim(5, 10)  
 p1 <- p1 + xlim(5, 10)  
 
 p1 <- p1 + ylab("IMDB Ratings")  
 p1 <- p1 + xlab("GoodReads Ratings *2")  
 p1 <- p1 + ggtitle("Stephen King: Books vs. Movies")  

p1 <- p1 + annotate("text", x = 7.3, y = 5.3, label = "The Tommyknockers", size=3, colour="blue3")  
p1 <- p1 + annotate("text", x = 7.95, y = 7.37, label = "Carrie", size=3, colour="blue3") 
p1 <- p1 + annotate("text", x = 8, y = 6.5, label = "Pet Sematary", size=3, colour="blue3") 
p1 <- p1 + annotate("text", x = 7.9, y = 8.54, label = "The Shining", size=3, colour="red3") 
p1 <- p1 + annotate("text", x = 8.75, y = 9.4, label = "Shawshank Redemption", size=3, colour="red3")
p1 <- p1 + annotate("text", x = 9.18, y = 8.4, label = "The Green Mile", size=3, colour="blue3") 
p1 <- p1 + annotate("text", x = 8.72, y = 8, label = "Stand By Me", size=3, colour="blue3") 
p1 <- p1 + annotate("text", x = 8.92, y = 7.3, label = "The Stand", size=3, colour="blue3") 
p1 <- p1 + annotate("text", x = 8.3, y = 6.85 , label = "It", size=3, colour="blue3") 
p1 <- p1 + annotate("text", x = 8.32, y = 7.7, label = "Misery", size=3, colour="blue3") 
p1 <- p1 + annotate("text", x = 8.18, y = 6.7, label = "Under the Dome", size=3, colour="blue3") 

p1 <- p1 + annotate("text", x = 9.28, y = 5.0, label = "Books Higher Rated", size=5, colour="blue3") 
p1 <- p1 + annotate("text", x = 5.7, y = 9.90, label = "Films Higher Rated", size=5, colour="red3") 



p1 <- p1 + annotate("text", x = 6.9, y = 6, label = "Cujo", size=3, colour="blue3") 
p1 <- p1 + annotate("segment", x = 7.05, xend = 7.2, y = 6.0, yend = 6.0, colour = "blue3") 


p1 <- p1 + annotate("text", x = 6.45, y = 5.52, label = "Dreamcatcher", size=3, colour="blue3") 
p1 <- p1 + annotate("segment", x = 6.8, xend = 7.05, y = 5.5, yend = 5.5, colour = "blue3") 


p1 <- p1 + annotate("text", x = 6.80, y = 7.4, label = "Dolores Claiborne", size=3, colour="blue3")
p1 <- p1 + annotate("segment", x = 7.28, xend = 7.5, y = 7.4, yend = 7.4, colour = "blue3") 

p1 <- p1 + annotate("text", x = 7.92, y = 5.72, label = "The Dark Half", size=3, colour="blue3")
p1
ggsave("plot.png")

*This needs proper statistical significance testing so not really busted.