Stephen King’s Biggest Horror Franchise Is Also His Worst

Published Sep 2, 2026, 10:00 AM EDT Cathal Gunning has been writing about movies, television, culture, and politics online and in print since 2017. He worked as a Senior Editor in Adbusters Media Foundation from 2018-2019 and wrote for WhatCulture in early 2020. He has been a Senior Features Writer for ScreenRant since 2020. While Stephen King has plenty of critically acclaimed screen adaptations, the biggest franchise to come from the author’s back catalog, Children of the Corn, has always been one of his worst reviewed. Since his debut novel Carrie was released in 1974, Stephen King has been a regular fixture on the bestseller list. While Carrie was a massive hit that spawned an equally successful movie adaptation from director Brian De Palma two years later, it would still have been tough for readers to predict just how massive the prolific writer’s output would become in the decades that followed. King is a formative figure in 20th century American horror fiction, alongside the controversial cosmic horror writer HP Lovecraft and The Haunting of Hill House author Shirley Jackson. Many of his movie adaptations, such as 1980’s The Shining, 1990’s Misery, and 2017’s It, are considered all-time classics of the genre, while many of the TV shows based on his work, like 1978’s Tobe Hooper miniseries Salem’s Lot, are equally iconic. However, there are also plenty of King adaptations that fall far short of the author’s impressive reputation. Some diverged too dramatically from their source material, while others are simply based on King books and stories that were never all that well received in the first place. Surprisingly enough, one of King’s worst adaptations not only received a sequel, but ended up spawning what remains his biggest franchise to date. Even though 1984’s Children of the Corn was met with disdain by critics, this didn’t stop the series from releasing a whopping 11 movies over the 30 years that followed. Stephen King’s Children of the Corn Franchise Has 11 Movies Loosely based on the original short story of the same name from King’s 1978 collection, Night Shift, 1984’s Children of the Corn stars Peter Horton and Linda Hamilton as Burt and Vicky, a bickering couple who end up trapped in the abandoned town of Gatlin, Nebraska, after their car breaks down. Unbeknownst to the young duo, the adult townspeople of Gatlin were brutally massacred by their own children a few years earlier, after the young preacher Isaac convinced the kids that a cornfield-dwelling god known as "He Who Walks Behind the Rows” demanded sacrifices for a good harvest. Over the movie’s 92-minute runtime, Burt and Vicky repeatedly encounter, escape from, and do battle once more with the titular cult of crazed children, who attempt to sacrifice these newcomers in the hopes of finally securing this all-important harvest. Compared to King’s chilling horror thrillers like The Outsider, the premise of some corn-crazed kids hunting a hapless couple is hardly one of the author’s scariest concepts. However, despite how limited the movie’s fear factor might seem to be, Children of the Corn scared up a respectable $13 million at the box office on a budget of only $3 million. This resulted in a sequel some eight years later in Children of the Corn II: The Final Sacrifice, and that was when the franchise began in earnest. 1995’s Children of the Corn III: Urban Harvest brought the kids to the city and offered future A-list star Charlize Theron her first movie role, long before the Mad Max franchise’s Furiosa tangled with a far scarier doomsday cult. 1996’s Children of the Corn III: Urban Harvest starred Naomi Watts in an early role, while 1998’s Children of the Corn V: Fields of Terror managed to bag Eva Mendes before she was famous. 1999’s Children of the Corn 666: Isaac's Return and 2001’s Children of the Corn: Revelation rounded out the run of the original series, but these final outings were followed by 2009’s TV movie remake Children of the Corn, and 2011’s reboot Children of the Corn: Genesis. The reboot received a belated sequel in 2018’s Children of the Corn: Runaway, before 2023’s second reboot, Children of the Corn, restarted the convoluted continuity of the folk horror series all over again. Despite boasting a screenplay from Kurt Wimmer of The Beekeeper and Salt fame, 2023’s reboot was a financial flop that grossed little over $500,000 on a budget of $10 million. The reboot also earned almost universally negative reviews, but this has historically never proven a problem for this curious franchise. Children of the Corn Didn’t Even Start Strong While one of South Park’s funniest episodes parodied the King classic Pet Sematary, season 4, episode 16, “The Wacky Molestation Adventure,” was a full-episode spoof of Children of the Corn that saw the kids of South Park take over the titular town after getting their parents arrested on false charges of child endangerment. This episode was voted the best season 4 outing of the series, which proves there is clearly an affinity for this cult franchise among pop culture aficionados. This is uniquely interesting since, as far back as its original 1984 adaptation, none of Children of the Corn’s movies have ever been remotely popular with critics. Even the original movie got largely middling reviews, despite spawning no less than 10 follow-ups, with critics from TV Guide dubbing Children of the Corn “lame.” None of the franchise’s subsequent sequels or reboots fared much better, with 2023’s reboot being written off as “empty-headed” by Polygon while Bloody Disgusting awarded the movie 1/5. Children of the Corn’s Reboot Fate Proves The Franchise May Finally Be Dead The lengthy post-production and messy release of that reboot may finally be proof that, despite the franchise’s apparent inability to die, Children of the Corn is on its last legs in the 2020s. Mike Flanagan’s upcoming remakes of The Dark Tower, Carrie, and The Mist prove that the Doctor Sleep director is eager to take on all of King’s most notable titles, but even that virtuoso might have a hard time making something watchable out of this particularly corny series. Children of the Corn’s reboot was shot in early 2020 and originally premiered in October of that year, but Wimmer’s troubled movie wouldn’t receive a full release until March 2023. Despite a broad resurgence in King’s brand thanks to then-recent hits like It: Chapter 2, The Boogeyman, The Outsider, and Creepshow, years of post-production and release date delays, followed by bad reviews, proved that the 2023 reboot was seemingly destined to be the final nail in the Children of the Corn franchise’s coffin. Release Date March 9, 1984 Runtime 92 minutes Director Fritz Kiersch Cast Peter Horton Burton Stanton