Frank Darabont is tipped to direct a cheesy 2000s crime thriller

Directed by Frank Darabont three of the very best Stephen King adaptationsbut between 1994’s The Shawshank Redemption and 2007’s The Mist, the pulp maestro rarely had it easy.

If you’re wondering what could be so terrible about making a movie that’s consistently ranked #1 on IMDb’s Greatest Movies of All Time, you need to remember that “The Shawshank Redemption” was not a resounding success when it hit theaters in the late summer of 1994. The film, based on a novel from King’s famous collection “Different Seasons”, could not be marketed as a tale from the “King of Horrors”, nor could it rely on the star power that Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman were usually considered as ensemble actors. Its main selling point would be the reviews, and, well, the critics weren’t initially raving.

Things didn’t really take off for The Shawshank Redemption until it received seven Academy Award nominations, but that wasn’t enough to give it a boost at the box office. Ultimately, his status as a classic male whiner was acquired over time by home video and years of cable reruns. So by the time Darabont was ready to release his second adaptation of King with The Green Mile, he was pretty damn close to the brand.

And yet, 25 years later, The Green Mile is still Darabont’s highest-grossing film by a significant margin. His next feature films, The Majestic and The Mist, failed to live up to commercial expectations in 2001 and 2007 respectively, putting him almost back to square one as a director. He needed a kick. Fortunately, one materialized in the noisy script of one of the writers of the time. Darabont signed off, and all signs pointed to a course correction. Then everything fell apart.

In 2008 Kurt Wimmer’s Terrible Screenplay for Law Abiding Citizen aroused interest throughout the city. Revenge thriller about a man out for blood after his family’s killer goes free, locked away by two in-demand stars – Jamie Foxx and Gerard Butler. It started to feel like a movie when Darabont took over as director.

So why F. Did Gary Gray make a $127 million worldwide hit with him instead of Darabont?

The official story is that it was terrible creative differences that drove Darabont off the project, which he confirmed at the time with Ain’t It Cool News. But it was more than differences. It was a full-blown argument that ended abruptly. Although I was writing for AICN at the time and had an open line of dialogue with Darabont, I still don’t know exactly what happened (and thought it was none of my business, given that I wasn’t covering the film expressly for the site ). If I had to guess, I’d say a writer of Darabont’s caliber most likely had rewrites in mind, and that didn’t sit well with the producers, who liked the script as it was. It’s a shame it didn’t work out, because while I like Grey’s as a badass movie, in good hands it could have been a sharper, weirder riff on Death Wish.

And now for the heartthrob: Darabont hasn’t directed a movie since The Fog and hasn’t expressed any interest in returning to feature films in the last 16 years. We miss you Frank. (That said, the filmmaker has come out of retirement to direct two episodes of the upcoming final season of Stranger Things , so at least we have something to look forward to.)