The Dome Speaks — and Stephen King doesn’t like what it has to say. The horror author has shared some of his thoughts about CBS’s Under the Dome, the series that sometimes seemed to defy logic itself. It turns out that King wasn’t happy with it either.
Speaking to the Washington Post, King heaped praised on Amazon Studios’ adaptation of Mr. Mercedes, a crime drama series based on his Bill Hodges book trilogy. When asked about what makes Mr. Mercedes a successful adaptation of his work, King made the comparison to Under the Dome — a series he served as executive producer on when it aired from 2013-2015.
In short: Much like the Dome itself, which graciously recapped the series for Gizmodo all those years ago, King thinks the series went “entirely off the rails.” The biggest problem? It made things too easy for people on the inside. Where was the suffering?
“Under the Dome was one I felt like went entirely off the rails, because the people are doing things that don’t seem realistic. One thing that killed me was you never hear the sound of a generator anywhere. The electric power is fine. Everything looks clean. Everything is great, except that they’re cut off from the world. And that isn’t what would happen,” King said. “If you ask people to accept those ideas, there has to be a sense of realism that goes with it, that pulls you along.”
Mr. Mercedes is one of many, many King adaptations that are currently available to watch or getting ready to enter production. It’s kind of a Stephen King world right now, including Tommyknockers, Firestarter, and the upcoming The Stand. But the King Universe suffered a bit of a blow last night, with Hulu announcing it would not be renewing Castle Rock for a third season.