The Screenwriter of ‘Carrie’ Worked on Another Stephen King Adaptation, and Boy, It Was Rough

Some of Stephen King's books are so massive and complex, their stories don't fit into a single film, forcing the authors to turn to the miniseries format. One such project was The Tommyknockers, which was based on King's novel of the same name and released on ABC in 1993. This project, which not many viewers remember today, faced a lot of troubles during its development and production, yet the worst of its misfortunes was the quality of the original text itself. The book, which was published in 1987, is almost universally disliked even by the horror master's fans, and its harshest critic is King himself, who is on record calling it "awful" and openly talking about the influence his drug addiction at the time had on his writing. Tasked with creating the screenplay was Lawrence D. Cohen, who had previously worked with King's prose, including the scripts for Brian De Palma's Carrie (which he later turned into a musical) and the It miniseries. With The Tommyknockers, Cohen faced a sort of uphill battle since he needed to make the narrative more concise and coherent, while also keeping it exciting and intriguing.