Dark series 'The Institute' adaptation gets author Stephen King's thumbs up
By MARK KENNEDY
Stephen King has a rule for anyone wanting to adapt one of his books for the big or small screen. It's basically the Hippocratic oath for intellectual property — first, do no harm.
'When you deviate from the story that I wrote, you do so at your own risk,' he said in a recent interview from his home in Maine. 'I know what I'm doing and I'm not sure that screenwriters always do or that producers and directors always do.'
Not everyone has listened to King, who has enjoyed hit adaptations — 'The Shawshank Redemption,' 'Stand By Me,' 'Misery,' 'It' and 'The Shining' — as well as flops — 'Salem's Lot,' 'Graveyard Shift' and 'The Lawnmower Man.'
The industrious novelist has lately watched as a wave of adaptations are crafted for theaters or streaming platforms, a list that includes 'The Life of Chuck' and the upcoming 'The Long Walk,' 'The Running Man' and 'It: Welcome to Derry.' It also includes the eight-episode series 'The Institute,' which debuts on MGM+ on Sunday.
It's about a secret government facility where kids with special talents — telekinesis and telepathy — are imprisoned and put to dark geopolitical uses. Their bedrooms are faithfully re-created and creepy posters — 'Your Gift Is Important' and 'I Choose to be Happy' — line the halls.
Does this small-screen adaptation of his 2019 book get King's approval? 'I'm talking to you which is a pretty good sign,' he says, laughing. He even signed on as executive producer.
'When I write a book, it's a single-person sport and when these people do a TV show or a movie it becomes a team sport. So you expect some changes and, sometimes, man, they're really good.'
'The Institute' stars Mary-Louise Parker as a sinister scientist and Ben Barnes as a small-town cop on opposite sides as the group of children are kidnapped and exploited. The series is faithful to the book, but includes some changes, like setting it entirely in Maine and aging the hero up so as not to appear too sadistic.
That hero — 14-year-old Luke Ellis, played winningly by Joe Freeman — is the latest youngster with special powers that King has manifested, a line that stretches back to the heroine of 'Carrie,' Danny Torrance in 'The Shining' and Charlie McGee in 'Firestarter.'
'I thought to myself, what would happen if a bunch of kids that had psychic powers could see enough of the future to tell when certain moments were going to come along,' he says. 'But the kids would be wrecked by this process and they would be kept in a place where they could serve the greater good. It was a moral problem that I really liked.'
King has a special respect for young adults, who he says can be brave and behave nobly under pressure but who can also be mean and petty.
He says he was inspired by William Golding, who wrote the iconic 'Lord of the Flies,' a dystopian novel about a group of schoolboys who while trying to survive on a remote island unlock their own barbarism.
'He was talking to his wife before he wrote the book and he said, 'What would it be like if I wrote a story about boys and the way that boys really acted?' And so I tried to write a book about kids the way that kids really act,' says King.
Executive producer and co-writer Benjamin Cavell says King resists the impulse to be overly involved in the process, instead identifying people he trusts to do right by the material.
'So much of the pleasure of King's writing is the access he gives his reader to the deepest, darkest, most private thoughts and dreams and desires of his characters; the adaptor's task is to make all that external and cinematic,' says Cavell.
Jack Bender has become something of a King whisperer, helping adapt both King's 'Mr. Mercedes' and 'The Outsider' to the screen. This time, he helped direct and executive produce 'The Institute.'
'I count my blessings to be in the position of someone he creatively trusts,' says Bender. 'He is a genius at tapping into the fears we all share of what's hiding under our beds. For me, both 'Mr. Mercedes' and 'The Institute' deal with those fears by focusing on the monsters inside of us human beings, not just outside in the world around us.'
The first thing Bender and Cavell had to figure out was what form 'The Institute' would take — a standalone film or a series.
'In the case of 'The Institute,' which was a 576-page novel packed with rich, fascinating characters that would need time to connect and be with each other, I didn't want to shrink it into a 110 minute movie that would've become the 'X-Kids,'' says Bender.
King says that while Hollywood has a seemingly insatiable appetite for his books, he hasn't gotten more cinematic as a writer — he always has been.
'I am one of the first writers that was actually influenced by television as well as movies. 'I grew up with the idea that things should be cinematic and that you should look at things in a visual way, a very sensory way.'
King was also pleased that the adapters of 'The Institute' made sure not to change the name of Barnes' small-town cop, Tim.
"I named him Tim because I read somewhere that no great thing was ever done by a man named Tim. And so I thought to myself, 'Yeah, well, OK, I'll call him Tim and he can do great things.''
© Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
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This image released by MGM+ shows Joe Freeman in a scene from "The Institute." (Chris Reardon/MGM+ via AP) By MARK KENNEDY Stephen King has a rule for anyone wanting to adapt one of his books for the big or small screen. It's basically the Hippocratic oath for intellectual property — first, do no harm. 'When you deviate from the story that I wrote, you do so at your own risk,' he said in a recent interview from his home in Maine. 'I know what I'm doing and I'm not sure that screenwriters always do or that producers and directors always do.' Not everyone has listened to King, who has enjoyed hit adaptations — 'The Shawshank Redemption,' 'Stand By Me,' 'Misery,' 'It' and 'The Shining' — as well as flops — 'Salem's Lot,' 'Graveyard Shift' and 'The Lawnmower Man.' 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'The Institute' stars Mary-Louise Parker as a sinister scientist and Ben Barnes as a small-town cop on opposite sides as the group of children are kidnapped and exploited. The series is faithful to the book, but includes some changes, like setting it entirely in Maine and aging the hero up so as not to appear too sadistic. That hero — 14-year-old Luke Ellis, played winningly by Joe Freeman — is the latest youngster with special powers that King has manifested, a line that stretches back to the heroine of 'Carrie,' Danny Torrance in 'The Shining' and Charlie McGee in 'Firestarter.' 'I thought to myself, what would happen if a bunch of kids that had psychic powers could see enough of the future to tell when certain moments were going to come along,' he says. 'But the kids would be wrecked by this process and they would be kept in a place where they could serve the greater good. It was a moral problem that I really liked.' King has a special respect for young adults, who he says can be brave and behave nobly under pressure but who can also be mean and petty. He says he was inspired by William Golding, who wrote the iconic 'Lord of the Flies,' a dystopian novel about a group of schoolboys who while trying to survive on a remote island unlock their own barbarism. 'He was talking to his wife before he wrote the book and he said, 'What would it be like if I wrote a story about boys and the way that boys really acted?' And so I tried to write a book about kids the way that kids really act,' says King. Executive producer and co-writer Benjamin Cavell says King resists the impulse to be overly involved in the process, instead identifying people he trusts to do right by the material. 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All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
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'We were very serious about the work, because Miloš was very serious. And we had the material, Kesey's work, and the reverence for that. We were not frivolous about it. But we did have a ball doing it,' DeVito said, laughing. Part of that is because they filmed on location at a real state hospital in Salem, Oregon. Everyone stayed in the same motel and would board the same bus in the morning to get to set. It would have been hard not to bond and even harder if they hadn't. 'There was full commitment,' Douglas said. 'That comes when you don't go home at night to your own lives. We stopped for lunch on the first day and I saw Jack kind of push his tray away and go outside to get some air. I said, 'Jack, you OK?' He said, 'Who are these guys? Nobody breaks character! It's lunch time and they're all acting the same way!'' Not disproving Nicholson's point, DeVito remembers he and the cast even asked if they could just sleep in the hospital. 'They wouldn't let us,' DeVito said. 'The floor above us had some seriously disturbed people who had committed murder.' The film will be in theaters again on July 13 and July 16 from Fathom Entertainment. It's a new 4K restoration from the Academy Film Archive and Teatro Della Pace Films with an introduction by Leonard Maltin. 'It's a gorgeous print and reminds me how good the sound was,' Douglas said. DeVito thinks it, 'holds up in a really big way, because Miloš really was paying attention to all great things in the screenplay and the story originally.' Besides the shock of 'holy Toledo, am I that old?' DeVito said that it was a treasure to be part of — and he continues to see his old friends, including Douglas, Lloyd and, of course, Nicholson, who played the protagonist, R.P. McMurphy. One person Douglas thinks hasn't gotten the proper attention for his contributions to 'Cuckoo's Nest' is producer Saul Zaentz, who died in 2014. 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I doubt anything else really came close to it. Even my Oscar for best actor years later didn't really surpass that moment very early in my career.' © Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
