Stephen King’s 2 Cancelled Adaptations Highlight A Harsh Reality

The cancellation of two Stephen King projects in quick succession, The Revelations of Becka Paulson and The Talisman, proves a harsh truth about the author’s onscreen output. Stephen King has penned over 60 books, and the prolific author shows no signs of slowing down any time soon. Unsurprisingly, his many bestsellers have inspired a litany of screen adaptations.

King’s work has been brought to life on both the big and small screens for decades, and recent years have seen a renewed interest in his back catalog. From HBO Max’s successful It prequel series Welcome to Derry to Glen Powell’s dystopian sci-fi thriller The Running Man, 2025 was filled with Stephen King adaptations.

However, viewers who hoped to see more of the author’s work brought to life on the small screen in the coming months may be disappointed. Two major upcoming King adaptations, The Revelations of Becka Paulson and The Talisman, were canceled since the start of January 2026 in what appears to be a worrying trend for the author’s unfinished projects.

The Revelations of Becka Paulson’s Cancellation Make Netflix’s The Talisman Cancellation Worse

Although the Stranger Things finale was a huge hit for Netflix, the streaming service clearly didn’t have an excess of faith in the show’s creators, the Duffer Brothers. A few years ago, the Duffer Brothers announced an adaptation of King’s 1984 collaboration with author Peter Straub, the coming-of-age fantasy novel The Talisman.

The Talisman blends grounded character drama with high fantasy and horror elements in the story of 12-year-old Jack Sawyer, a boy who travels between the real world and a parallel universe called The Territories. Searching for an artifact to cure his mother’s deadly disease, Jack does battle with various villains and encounters a range of fantasy characters in this realm.

Although the cinematic novel seemed like a perfect project for the Duffer Brothers after the success of Stranger Things, the duo revealed that they were no longer attached to the series shortly after the release of the Stranger Things finale. This was a crushing blow to the book’s admirers, but not the last bit of bad news for King fans.

Announced in 2020, the CW’s The Revelations of Becka Paulson was set to be an adaptation of King’s short story of the same name from the collection Skeleton Crew. Already adapted into a 1997 episode of The Outer Limits, "The Revelations of Becka Paulson" follows the titular character’s bizarre fate after she accidentally shoots herself while cleaning a gun.

Becka Paulson soon starts seeing an image of Jesus that not only speaks to her, but reveals the secrets of her nearest and dearest. Before long, this hallucinated Jesus is telling Becka about her husband’s infidelity and helping her plan a revenge scheme that swiftly turns bloody and brutal.

While The Revelations of Becka Paulson is hardly one of King’s best-known stories, the prospect of an adaptation by the CW seemed interesting when the project was announced. The original short story is little more than a gory, mean-spirited shaggy dog story, so it would have been intriguing to see how a show would flesh out this slight King effort.

Stephen King Adaptations Are No Longer Guaranteed TV Successes

Sadly, viewers will never know what the CW’s The Revelations of Becka Paulson had in store for audiences. Arriving less than a week after the announcement of The Talisman’s cancellation, the project’s cancellation signals a shift in the fortunes of King’s small-screen adaptations. Uneven reviews and audience reception appear to have dimmed enthusiasm for King TV shows.

For every major critical hit like 2020’s perfect adaptation of The Outsider, Mr Mercedes, or It: Welcome to Derry, there are plenty of expensive small-screen misfires adapted from King’s work. Among the worst are 2017’s The Mist and 2020’s version of The Stand.

While the latter had the misfortune of focusing on a pandemic during the real-life COVID-19 pandemic, this was far from the only problem with the expensive, misjudged miniseries. With bizarre out-of-order storytelling, some hilariously questionable casting and performances, and a plethora of ill-advised changes to the original story, The Stand proved that King’s big-screen success wasn’t easily replicated.

Stephen King’s Box Office Struggles Make Adaptation Cancellations Understandable

Although 2017’s It managed to turn an unwieldy behemoth of a book into an accessible, billion-dollar horror movie, The Stand made King’s longest novel into something even more convoluted, tonally inconsistent, and overly ambitious than the original book. That said, recent years have proven that even King’s big-screen adaptations aren’t guaranteed to succeed.

2025’s The Running Man flopped despite critical acclaim, while the same year’s short story adaptation from horror icon Mike Flanagan, The Life of Chuck, suffered the same fate. While director Francis Lawrence’s The Long Walk made back its budget, the dystopian drama still underperformed, particularly compared to Lawrence’s earlier hits in the genre, the Hunger Games franchise and I Am Legend.

2024’s Salem’s Lot went straight to streaming, cementing the reality that King’s work isn’t always guaranteed to produce major hits. Thus, it is arguably unsurprising that, between The Revelations of Becka Paulson and The Talisman, TV producers are clearly losing faith in King’s reliability as a brand.