Alex Rivera | August 19, 2022

Pennywise Would Be Proud—The Most Googled Stephen King Movies

Stephen King has frightened and entertained his readers with classics like It and The Shawshank Redemption for decades. Many of King’s novels and short stories have been adapted into movies and TV shows, and have inspired shows like Stranger Things. It has been adapted multiple times on the small and big screens, The Green Mile is one of the highest-grossing Stephen King film adaptations, and Salem’s Lot is being remade, again, and hitting the big screens in the near future.

With so much Stephen King content out there and USDish’s third annual Stephen King Scream Job in full swing, we wanted to know which movie was each state’s most searched Stephen King film. From The Shining to The Green Mile, these are the stories that took over your state’s Google search bar the most.

Interesting Findings

• Pennywise is King — Sitting atop the search mountain, both It Chapter Two and It were googled the most at twelve and eight states respectively. Pennywise might be the most famous clown, but for all the wrong reasons, as King’s frightening novel It was adapted onto both the silver screen as a two-part miniseries in 1990 and more recently on the big screen in 2017 and 2019. There have been rumors of a third film, with a release date yet to be determined.
• Misery Loves Company — Kathy Bates’ portrayal in the 1990s classic earned her an Academy Award for best actress in a leading role. Both critics and fans loved the film, giving it a 90% on Rotten Tomatoes. The Mist might’ve not had the star power of It, but it still garnered enough interest to tie third place with seven states searching it the most alongside horror counterpart, The Mist.
• There’s No Place Like Home — The Shining, starring Jack Nicholson, was fittingly the only King horror film searched the most in the story’s setting of Colorado. “Here’s Johnny!” also became one of the most well-known quotes in horror movie history for decades to come.

Methodology

We gathered the top 15 horror and thriller movies by Stephen King, ranked by Rotten Tomatoes. The Tomatometer score represents the percentage of professional critic reviews that are positive for a given television show or film. Once we had our top 15 movies gathered, we used Google Trends to compare the search volume of the Top 15 Stephen King movies per state over time. 

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