Stephen King recently said the Misery movie was better than his novel for one big reason, but this isn’t the only time this has been true in his career. The most obvious reason is the actors, with Kathy Bates winning an Oscar for her performance and James Caan picking up a Saturn Award nomination.

Stephen King also said Rob Reiner and William Goldman made changes to Misery when adapting the story that improved it. According to the horror author, the Misery movie had “a touch of humor in it that was really missing from the book.” This comes primarily thanks to the acting, and specifically Kathy Bates’ portrayal of Annie Wilkes.

That said, Stephen King also said he appreciates that it didn’t deviate too much from his story, remarking that “if you bought a book to do, you would think that you would want to do that book rather than some other idea.” While it tells the same story, King is right; the Misery movie is better than his novel.

Stephen King Is Right, The Misery Movie Is Better

Clearly, the biggest reason that the Misery movie beats out Stephen King’s source novel is the performance of Kathy Bates. King created one of the most terrifying villains of all time with Annie Wilkes in Misery, but Bates did something unique with the character. She made Annie a little more quirky, which is where the humor comes from.

Annie could have been psycH๏τic and unhinged, but Bates somehow made her a normal, small-town woman who also happened to be an unhinged fan. This is a big reason King wrote the book; he felt that fans were trying to force his career into a certain corner, and he wanted to write a story about losing control.

Stephen King has long admitted that Annie Wilkes is his favorite character, and that is likely because he sees a bit of himself in Paul Sheldon. Annie is someone he was able to connect with on a personal level. It also helped that she was quirky, and in the movie, Kathy Bates made her even more interesting.

The Misery movie has a lot of reasons to love it. King wrote Misery during a low point in his life, where his novels were growing increasingly dark. Reiner’s movie kept things moving, delivering a fun horror movie with a perfect combination of humor and terrifying moments. It is a big reason it ranks among King’s best movie adaptations.

Misery Isn’t The Most Obvious Case Of A Stephen King Movie Beating The Book

While the Misery movie is one of Stephen King’s best adaptations, and even better than his novel, it isn’t the only one to fit that description. If there is one movie that easily blew the original story away, it is The Shawshank Redemption. The source material was a novella in the Different Seasons collection, but the movie expanded on it.

Frank Darabont took that smaller story and created a movie that was perfect in almost every way. While there are hints that a Shawshank Redemption remake might be coming, that would be a mistake because the original film did everything right and made something even better than King’s original story.

While Stephen King might disagree, there are ways that Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining is also better than the novel. The movie puts more of an emphasis on Jack and not the H๏τel, but the way Kubrick sH๏τ the film makes it one of the best horror movies of all time.

Stephen King has a list of what he considers the best movies ever made of his work, with Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile, Stand By Me, and Misery at the top of his list. Of those, it is easy to see why he considers Misery to be the movie he believes to be even better than his own written work.