Stephen King by the Box Office

Sky Movies has an interesting slide slow titled "Stephen King By The Box Office."  It looks at 34 of King's movies, and tells us how it did at the box office.  Each movie not only lists what it took in at the box office, but tries to adjust for inflation.

The site notes, "Box office figures from BoxOfficeMojo.com. Inflation calculated with the USInflationCalculator.com."

Here's the breakdown:

• $134,711 , Riding The Bullet. The article notes, "The film bombed at the box office after receiving a deserved critical panning and holds the unenviable record of the lowest grossing Stephen King adaptation to date"
• $125,397 , The Night Flier.  (Sky Movies adjusts for inflation, giving it $182,467)
• $1,781,383 , The Mangler
•  $8,863,193 , Apt Pupil
• $7,433,663 , Maximum Overdrive.  I like this from the article, "Picking up two Razzie nominations for King and the film’s star, Emilio Estevez, the film was universally panned. However, despite even King writing it off as “the worst adaptation of his work”, it managed to reclaim $7,433,663 of its $9 million budget- just under $16 million in today’s money."
• $10,611,160 , The Dark Half
• $11,582,891, Graveyard Shift
• $15,315,484, Thinner.  WAIT. . . Thinner made it this far up on the list?  "Thinner performed reasonably upon release, helped by the fact that it was attached to Michael Jackson’s short film, Ghosts, also co-written by King."  Oh, that explains it.
• $15,185,672, Needful Things
• $12,361,866, Silver Bullet "Silver Bullet divided opinion at the time but has slowly gained something of a cult following over the years."  count me in the cult.
• $13,086,297, Cats Eyes
• $14,568,989, Children of the Corn.  Don't we wish that had been the last dollar that franchise would make?
• $24,361,867, Dolores Claiborne.
• $17,080,167, Fire Starter
• $30,919,415, Hearts in Atlantis
• $28,341,469, The Shawhank Redemption
• $20,766,616, The Dead Zone
• $21,017,849, Christine
• £30,524,763, Sleepwalkers (say it ain't so!)
• $21,156,152, Cujo
• $21,028,755, Creepshow
• $32,100,816, The Lawnmower Man  "This sci-fi horror baffled audiences and divided critics at the time, but it still opened at number two in the box office behind Wayne’s World and spawned a sequel in the form of 1996’s Lawnmower Man 2: Beyond Cyberspace."  For the record, I really hated  this film.  I feel good about that.
• $38,122,105, The Running Man
• $59,006,619, Carrie 2013 "the film has already done decent business in the US and looks set to easily clear the $60 million mark."
• $57,293,715, The Mist
• $75, 715,436, Dreamcatcher.  No, I can't explain that.  "Even with a cast of names including Morgan Freeman, Damian Lewis and Jason Lee, the film dive-bombed at the American box office, although it did break even upon worldwide release."
• $57,469,467, Pet Sematary.
• $33,800,000, Carrie 1979
•  £61,276,872, Misery.
• $52,287,414, Stand By Me
• $92,913,171, Secret Window
• $44,017,374, The Shining
• $131,998,242, 1408.  This surprised me, since it's a film I really didn't think was very strong.  However,  it sure did make  strong showing at the box officer.
• $286,801,374, The Green Mile.

The full article is at skymovies.sky.com