Stephen King shares 10 favorite films, omits his own adaptations

Stephen King this week shared his 10 favorite films of all time, posting the list on X as a new adaptation of his 1979 novel The Long Walk prepares to reach cinemas. King said the selections were listed in no particular order and explicitly excluded four widely praised screen versions of his own work: Misery, The Shawshank Redemption, Stand by Me and The Green Mile.

King’s list mixes celebrated classics with a few less expected choices. The films he named are Sorcerer (1977), The Godfather Part II (1974), The Getaway (1972), Groundhog Day (1993), Casablanca (1943), The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948), Jaws (1975), Mean Streets (1973), Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) and Double Indemnity (1944). He prefaced the list by noting he was leaving his own adaptations off the list, a move some observers interpreted as an attempt to avoid tilting the ranking toward films adapted from his work.

Several themes stand out in King’s choices. Six of the ten films come from the 1970s, the decade when King was in his 20s and beginning his career, and the list includes multiple entries from directors long associated with American cinema’s New Hollywood era. Fans and critics noted...