Does anyone else think that this already remade (at the 90% story level) when Stephen King did the movie "Needful Things"?
share"Needful Things" was fun in its own way but it was a pretty blatant ripoff of "Something Wicked."
And Leland Gaunt was no Mr. Dark.
Actually Bradbury originally wrote SWTWC as a screenplay that would star Gene Kelly (Bradbury was close friends w/ Gene Kelly.) Gene Kelly tried to get the screenplay adapted into a movie but failed, 15 yrs later the book was eventually turned into a movie. How could Bradbury rip off Stephen King?
shareWhy is everyone up in arms about who ripped off who and whatnot? Can you just appreciate the fact that SWTWC is a great movie for kids???? Who cares about the technical stuff...I was born in '81 and SWTWC was one of the first movies I can remember from my childhood that I actually enjoyed and am still highly entertained with today. I think any writer who has their book turned into a movie would appreciate that their fans love their work, regardless of minor changes from book to screen. ConfettiGrl2 seems to have the best information for the "rip-off" argument. And I personally would LOVE to see a remake w/the whole dark carnival in autumn theme....maybe with Christopher Lee as Mr. Dark this time. That man frightens the crap out of me!!
shareWell I have been slowly working on a screenplay for about 15 years of a story called "Cirque de la Mort".
It's basically like SWTWC, but instead of an evil circus, it's the town that is evil. The circus is all undead (they died in a train crash 100 years prior), but the troupe have no idea they ever passed on. It is the 100th anniversary of their tragic end, and the circus rolls into town and sets up their tents. It isn't untill their big debut that the townspeople find out that they are all skeletons, zombies, ghosts, and other paranormal creatures. So naturally the town freaks out and tries to destroy the circus.
That's the basic premise, but there is more to it. It's basically a role reversal. Once the circus troupe realizes they are undead, they also freak out, but they are trapped because of the tragic way in which they died.
I think it could be a really cool stop motion, or animated film, but it will probably never see the light of day.
Under the trivia for the film, it does say that King wrote a rejected adaptation, so who knows...
I own Needful Things on DVD (I am a huge fan of Stephen King), but I haven't seen Something Wicked in many years.
They both cribbed from Charles Finney's book "The Circus of Dr. Lao" written in 1935. Read it and weep.
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Lao was unevil circus.
Everytime i see Carnival i think of Somethiing Wickd.
Well, THE CIRCUS OF DR. LAO is certainly not about a circus stealing people's souls by tempting them with their heart's desires, as Bradbury's book is. In fact, the book THE CIRCUS OF DR. LAO really has no plot. A magic circus comes to town, strange things happen, and it leaves again.
The movie 7 FACES OF DR. LAO made it into a sort of circus version of MARY POPPINS (Both films came out the same year): a magic circus comes to town and solves everyone's problems. It's the reverse of SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES. They make a fun double-feature.(The actor Royal Dano is in both movies. He's Tom Fury, the lightning rod salesman in SOMETHING WICKED, and he's the taller of Mr. Stark's two thug-henchmen in DR. LAO.)
NEEDFUL THINGS has many things in common with Bradbury's book, but to call it a rip-off is to show that you know nothing at all about the creative process. It's not King's best book, but it's far from his worst.
But all these works INFLUENCED each other. In fact, I have a copy of THE CIRCUS OF DR. LAO that Ray Bradbury wrote the introduction for. In DANSE MACABRE, King writes a lengthy essay analyzing SOMETHING WICKED in depth.
SALEM's LOT is NOT a "rip-off" of DRACULA. Rather, it is inspired by DRACULA. Have any of you READ DRACULA? The two stories are VERY different. SALEM'S LOT has more in common with INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS than DRACULA. He took a premise: What if a vampire very like Count Dracula moved into a small town in Maine?
Coincidentally, the first time I met Stephen King, back in 1979, he was carrying a copy of THE SHORT STORIES OF RAY BRADBURY. He loves Bradbury, but he's also aware that a little Bradbury goes a long way. Bradbury's prose (And I love Bradbury) is like cotton candy: overly sweet, too much of it can make you sick. After a while, the endless romanticizing, metaphoric, faux-poetic imagry gets a tad tiring. I can read at most, one Bradbury book a year. King's more muscular prose doesn't wear me out.
Of all these books, THE CIRCUS OF DR. LAO is the best, NEEDFUL THINGS the least. But they are all worth reading.
As movies, 7 FACES OF DR. LAO is the most fun, NEEDFUL THINGS the most botched (It's quite changed from King's book, and directed by the son of Charleton Heston.) and SOMETHING WICKED the biggest disappointment, as it is a much better book than film.
But Bradbury, King and Charles Finney (Dr. Lao) are all fine, original writers, and none of them are rip-off artists.
The things that happen in Something Wicked happen in real life but in a different way. I know of a woman was has been obsessed with being young and beautiful. She got her wish by forking over the money to pay for facelifts, body changes, etc. But now she cannot stop having facelifts; she has one after the other even though she didn't need it. Her face now looks like a plastic mask, sort of like what happened to Michael Jackson.
But Jackson is just another example. He was obsessed with being a child and being with children. That backfired also. The guy(?) has the maturity of a 15 yr old kid and no matter how you cut it, his desires have led to innumberable problems for him.
Much the same thing applies to Rosie O'Donnel (sic?). She is obsessed with expressing her opinions publicly, but she is making the public hate her.
So it is with sin. Those who are obsessed with sinful things find sooner or later that there is a payback.
Hey, King himself says that he made a re-write of Dracula when he write Salem´s Lot. Is not big secret...
But cujo being jaws? thats ridiculus! Cujo deals with a common subject on King´s work, the possibility of being in danger, trap and lost like in a desert island in the middle of the modern world... Just because there is an animal involve there is not much similitude
I can't honestly see the big connections between the 2 books myself - really enjoyed them both in very different ways.
SWTWC - in many ways it was as much an elegy to childhood and growing up as it was a fantasy/horror story (and beuatiful poetic prose too)
NF - a great story and as usual SK is quite a moralist in some ways. The devil here does very little but creates the chaos by setting people against people.
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The whole idea of "ripping off" stories as being a bad thing, or being avoidable is silly. There are only so many basic plots...or rather, only so many that ever get used, or can be used without people claiming its too weird or doesnt make sense.
Stephen King is like a literary blender. He was hugely influenced by many other writers...Ray Bradbury and Lovecraft in particular.
He has admited that Salem's Lot was a homage to Bram Stoker's Dracule (thats not the same as a "rip off" or plagarism. I seem to remember he even said basically the same thing about Needful Things and Something Wicked This way Comes.
However, only the basic concept is all that similiar...a supernatural agency that grants you your wishes, but at a price and/or in an undesired way. Thats an old old OLD concept, but SWTWC and Needful Things both do it in different ways.
Likewise, Cujo isnt really much like Jaws accept both feature an animal as the source of danger. Its all about genres and sub genres and frameworks...but just cause the framework is the same, doesnt make the story the same.
Ofcourse, you could also say that both stories borrowed heavily from Faustian parables.
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