The 30th anniversary of Stephen King’s The Dark Half, published in 1989, seems to offer an opportune moment to take a look at the collaboration between King and George A. Romero that brought King’s novel about a writer’s alter ego to the screen.
It’s perhaps unsurprising that the late George A. Romero is so often associated with Stephen King. Having become firm friends in the 1970s – King even has a small cameo in Romero’s Knightriders (1981) – the two masters of horror first worked together on Creepshow (1982), a tribute to the colourful horror comics that they both loved in their youth. They collaborated again on its sequel Creepshow 2 (1987) and the cult anthology series Tales from the Darkside (1983–1988), which was designed to capitalise on Creepshow‘s modest commercial success (and was even intended to carry its title before Romero and his frequent producer, Richard P. Rubinstein, chose to rebrand the series for Tribune Broadcasting and avoid a potential rights dispute with Warner Brothers).
