Stephen King weighed in on Mike Flanagan’s Carrie — consider us on alert
Stephen King has weighed in on Mike Flanagan’s Prime Video take on Carrie — but is he on board?
Here we go again: another Stephen King adaptation, this time with Mike Flanagan in charge, so yes—hopes are predictably high. The man behind The Haunting of Hill House and Midnight Mass is tackling Carrie for Prime Video, and, unsurprisingly, the King himself has actually weighed in. Let’s just say, he’s properly chuffed.
Flanagan Gets the King Seal
If you’ve been counting, this is apparently the fifth time somebody’s had a bash at King's 1974 novel. This new outing is a miniseries, not a film, which to my mind is a far better fit for a story with so many knives in so many backs. Summer H. Howell is up for a rough ride as the titular outcast, with her Carrie White chucking herself into public school after a suffocating home life—just in time to develop terrifying powers and, crucially, wind up at the epicentre of a very modern disaster.
Big names round out the cast: Samantha Sloyan, Matthew Lillard, Siena Agudong, Josie Totah, and Amber Midthunder are all part of the blood-soaked fun. But it’s the King Family Reactions Department that’s got horror fans paying attention.
King himself jumped on Threads to deliver his verdict:
Mike Flanagan's version of CARRIE is brilliant. What it has to say about social media is shocking and true.
Not to be outdone, King’s son Joe Hill got a bit misty-eyed after watching the trailer on Instagram. He said it nearly brought him to tears—a new experience, apparently—and admitted he might just be getting soft in his fifties. At any rate, team King seem unanimously on board.
Why This Carrie Is Different
This isn’t some loyal, scene-for-scene retread of the old De Palma film. What Flanagan’s gone and done is pull Carrie headlong into the now, with modern social media acting not only as a backdrop, but as a central plank of the story. Instead of just classroom cruelty and religious guilt, Carrie is navigating a viral bullying scandal—because, of course, a telekinetic meltdown in 2026 would end up all over Instagram before you could say 'Prom queen'.
All eight episodes of Carrie drop on Prime Video on 7 October 2026.
The supernatural fireworks are still front and centre, obviously, but the show’s making a point about online pressure and cruelty that King himself found both shocking and a bit too real. If horror is meant to reflect society’s worst corners, Flanagan seems determined to make us look straight at them—phone in hand.