Donald Trump was still months away from being elected president when Stephen King began writing his new novel. But The Institute out September 10th and centered on a 12-year-old boy stolen from his parents in the night and locked up in a mysterious facility is likely to remind readers of certain immigration policies. I cant help but see similarity between whats going on in The Institute and those pictures of kids in cages, says King. Sometimes fiction outpaces fact.
This isnt the first time a King book predicted the political future: His 1979 book The Dead Zone was about a Trump-like aspiring president threatening global apocalypse if he took office. Fiction has foreseen Trump before, says King, always as a nightmare. Now, the nightmare is here. But I dont want to force my worldview on people. Im not George Orwell, and this book isnt 1984. It wasnt meant to be an allegory.
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King is calling in from his house in Maine, just a couple of weeks after traveling to Foxborough, Massachusetts, to see his first-ever Rolling Stones concert. (Keith looked a little tentative and just putting in the time at first, but then he caught fire.) Hes still reveling in the surge of interest in his work that followed 2017s It, now the highest-grossing horror movie ever. I think a lot of kids watched the [1990] It miniseries with Tim Curry, and it scared the living shit right out of them, King says. They couldnt wait to go back and see it again.
Like It, The Institute is about a group of children who band together to battle an unspeakably evil force. The twist this time is that they all have telekinetic or psychic powers and the adults who run the facility force them to undergo medical experiments. I wanted to write a book like Tom Browns School Days, King says, referencing the 1857 Thomas Hughes childrens classic about a British boarding school. But in hell.
A book about clairvoyant kids battling a shadow organization will surely draw comparisons to Stranger Things. Which was, of course, heavily inspired by Stephen King books. I like [Stranger Things] a lot, but it does owe something to It, the author says. Thats another book about kids who are weak and helpless by themselves but together can make something that is very strong.
Long before Stranger Things and even It, children with supernatural powers were at the center of King books like Carrie, The Shining, and Firestarter. Like a pitcher that has a great fastball or slider, you go back to what worked for you before, says King. I do think that kids are sort of magic. When I was a young man, I could draw [inspiration] from my own kids. Now that Im so much older, I am drawing from my grandchildren and what I see them doing and how I see them interacting.
The Institute could be the next King project to be adapted by Hollywood, joining The Stand (CBS All Access), The Outsider (HBO), and Liseys Story (Apple TV+) plus the seven movies he has in development. King has script approval on all of them. The scripts have to work, he says. They cant have 19 pages of flashbacks to when the characters were kids. I want the pedal to the metal as much of the time as possible.
The film adaptation of Kings 2013 The Shining sequel, Dr. Sleep, comes out November 8th and features Ewan McGregor playing an adult Danny Torrance. Though King has always hated Stanley Kubricks 1980 adaptation of his book for changing so much of the story, he allowed the Dr. Sleep filmmakers to use elements of Kubricks version. My problem with Kubricks film was that its so cold, King says. The reason I didnt have any problem with this script is they took some of Kubricks material and warmed it up.
Kings next book, If It Bleeds, is due out sometime in 2020. Its a continuation of his ongoing Holly Gibney detective series. I have to do a polish on that, he says. But its basically done. Hes already jamming away on the one after that (though hes not ready to divulge any details) and the sudden surge of interest in his work has been a great motivator to keep going. Im 71 years old, he says, and a lot of people my age are forgotten and Ive had this late season burst of success. Its very gratifying.
Naturally, retirement remains the last thing on his mind. Thats Gods decision, not mine, he says. But Ill know when its time. Ill either collapse at my desk or the ideas will run out the thing you dont want to do is embarrass yourself. As long as I feel like Im still doing good work, I cant see myself stopping.