The 2013 Stephen King Adaptation the Author Himself Couldn’t Stand Watching

Stephen King has never been shy about voicing his opinion on how Hollywood has handled his work over the decades, from his famously scathing take on Stanley Kubrick’s ‘The Shining’ to his surprising defense of the largely panned ‘1408.’ With so many adaptations of his novels and stories now sitting across film and television, King’s track record of speaking his mind has made him one of the more candid authors when it comes to critiquing his own franchise.

That candor extended in a very different direction with ‘Under the Dome,’ the 2013 CBS series based on King’s 2009 novel about a small Maine town suddenly sealed off from the outside world by a mysterious, impenetrable barrier. Unlike some of King’s adaptations that drew his ire from the very beginning, this particular series actually started out with the author’s genuine enthusiasm and approval.

That early goodwill didn’t last. Reflecting on the show years later, King said it went entirely off the rails, criticizing the way the characters behaved as increasingly unrealistic given the show’s already fantastical premise, and explaining that even science fiction needs a grounded sense of realism to keep viewers invested, according to Far Out Magazine.

King’s frustration wasn’t limited to just the writing choices. Speaking to The New York Times, he placed much of the blame on CBS itself, explaining that the network wasn’t interested in anything challenging, essentially wanting a comfortable, filler program rather than a series that respected or elevated the source material. He went on to admit that he eventually stopped watching entirely, saying he simply stopped caring enough to keep up with where the story was going.

‘Under the Dome’ didn’t begin as a disappointment by any measure. The series premiered to a record-breaking 13.5 million viewers, becoming the most-watched summer drama debut on any major network since 1992, and King himself praised the opening episodes directly to fans just days after it aired, insisting the show stood on its own as genuinely good television even for those who loved the original novel.

That praise didn’t survive the show’s full three-season run. Critics have pointed out that the series was originally intended as a tighter, thirteen-episode limited run more faithful to the condensed timeline of King’s novel, which unfolds over just about a week. Once CBS extended the story across three full seasons, the plot increasingly strayed from its source material, introducing new extraterrestrial explanations for the dome and other narrative choices that diverged sharply from what King had actually written.

By the time ‘Under the Dome’ wrapped its run in September 2015, the show had earned a lasting place on what’s been described as King’s unofficial list of adaptations he considers failures, a list that includes other notable disappointments dating back to Brian De Palma’s ‘Carrie.’ Rotten Tomatoes data reflects that same decline, with the series’ Tomatometer score dropping from 82 percent in its first season down to 60 percent by its third and final run.

King has since made clear he has little interest in revisiting the subject publicly, treating the show’s failures as a settled matter rather than something worth relitigating in interviews. For an author who’s rarely held back his opinions on adaptations of his work, that silence speaks volumes about just how far ‘Under the Dome’ fell short of the promise it initially showed.

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