The first Stephen King book ever published — the 1974 bestseller, Carrie — immediately put the horror writer on the map, and also led to it quickly becoming the first King story to be adapted for another medium with Brian De Palma's 1976 film version. King would turn out to be a shockingly prolific writer who went on to write a staggering amount of work filled with tons of beloved, instantly recognizable characters in the decades since. Yet still — even with the likes of IT, The Shining, Pet Sematary, and so many more that have now been given multiple incarnations — Carrie stands out for how many times it's been adapted. In fact, almost no other King project really comes close… except for the strange case of Children of the Corn and its 11 (!) movies, most of which were straight-to-video projects few ever mention.
It's easy to see why Carrie continues to be revisited. King's horror-tragedy about a sheltered teenage girl raised by a domineering religious mother and bullied by her classmates, only to lash out in bloody revenge thanks to her hidden telekinetic powers, feels like a dark fairy tale of sorts. Its touchstones, most especially the prom that ends the story — and the image of Carrie covered in pig's blood thanks to a diabolical prank, beginning her murderous rampage — are iconic and unforgettable.
October sees the debut of yet another version of Carrie, this time told in an expanded form as a streaming series from acclaimed filmmaker, television creator, and frequent King adapter Mike Flanagan. So with Carrie 2026 here, let's look back at all of the adaptations we've gotten so far, from the beloved to the best left forgotten.
Carrie (1976)
The gold standard of Carrie adaptations, Brian De Palma's film is still the one that all others are compared to 50 years later, and still counted amongst the best King adaptations for all of his work. Yes, there are some very dated and silly 1970s fashions and stylistic flourishes in the film, and a couple of puzzling diversions, such as a tux-renting comic relief montage featuring Carrie's prom date, Tommy (William Katt), alongside two guys who barely register as characters outside of this one sequence. But De Palma's film still expertly captures the essence of King's book and its inherent tragedy, aided in no small part by his terrific casting choices of the excellent Sissy Spacek as Carrie and Piper Laurie as her mother, Margaret.
Both women received well-deserved Oscar nominations for their roles, and the film benefits from great casting across the board, including Amy Irving as Carrie's sympathetic classmate, the regretful Sue Snell, and Nancy Allen as the nasty Chris Hargensen, who will ultimately push Carrie over the edge.
And of course, De Palma absolutely nails the prom sequence. Spacek bathed in blood is an all-time classic cinematic image, and his audacious use of split-screen effects to track the mayhem that follows as Carrie begins to kill her classmates works incredibly well.
Carrie: The Musical (1988)
The 1980s stand out as the only decade since Carrie's publication in the '70s without a new movie or TV project based on the book, but that didn't mean nothing was happening on the Carrie front. An infamous stage musical arrived to get plenty of attention in all the wrong ways.
Though it shared the same writer as the 1976 film, Lawrence D. Cohen, and even one cast member — Betty Buckley, who played gym teacher Miss Collins (renamed from the book's Miss Desjardin) in the film, and was cast as Margaret for this production – Carrie: The Musical hardly got the same response. Burdened by a notably high budget while still navigating major technical difficulties thanks to its tricky effects, and with original songs that received, at best, divisive responses, the show was greeted by some audible boos according to reports at the time.
Carrie would close after only 16 previews and 5 official performances, cementing its legacy as a legendary bomb… or as the New York Times called it, "the most expensive quick flop in Broadway history." But perhaps it's only fitting for a story that has been resurrected so many times that this wouldn't be the end for Carrie: The Musical. But we'll get back to that…
The Rage: Carrie 2 (1999)
The only Carrie story to date to serve as any sort of continuation or sequel came in this late '90s follow-up to the 1976 film, which centered on Rachel (Emily Bergl), a teenage girl who doesn't initially know she is actually Carrie White's half-sister. And yes, she has the same powers. (King's book establishes that there are other telekinetics, all women, but that men are the carriers of the "TK" gene. Carrie's father, Ralph, is dead prior to the events of the book, but De Palma's movie never mentions him, allowing for this sequel to suggest that he's somewhere out there, getting other women pregnant with more telekinetic girls).
The Rage is one of those sequels that effectively functions as a remake. Rachel just so happens to also be an outcast girl who also has an awful home life — this time thanks to crappy foster parents — and who will also eventually be made to think she's been accepted by her cool classmates only for a cruel prank to occur, this time at a house party and not the prom, with a sex tape of her and the boy she liked being played for all to see taking the place of the pig's blood. The end result is the same; everyone laughs, and then everyone dies.
The Rage was a turbulent production, initially developed as a completely independent story before being reshaped into a Carrie sequel. The original director was replaced mid-production over the dreaded "creative differences," with Katt Shea (Poison Ivy) replacing him. There's an interesting use of a real-life story — and a reflection of the odious ways young men can treat young women — in its depiction of a group of guys who cruelly seduce and then discard every girl they can just to rank them with their friends. And there's some fun to be had with Rachel's pseudo-gothy look and the baffling but visually cool way that vine-like tattoos cover her body and face during her massacre. Sadly, though, The Rage is a pretty "whatever" movie overall. It's also frustrating as hell on the legacy sequel front, with its one big returning character — Amy Irving back as Sue Snell — dispatched in an incredibly unceremonious way.
However, The Rage: Carrie 2 is at least a pretty amusing time capsule of a teen movie that came out in 1999, featuring plenty of touchstones of the era, including a ska song, a character quoting Scream, and the presence of Mena Suvari.
Carrie (2002)
Carrie made her first foray into television for this 2002 NBC TV movie, which is notable at this point because it was written by none other than Bryan Fuller a decade before he would create one of the best horror TV projects of all time (for NBC no less) with Hannibal. Fuller was the first person to utilize some of the true crime-style angle that the book is filled with, as King's original story includes all sorts of excerpts from testimony, books, and other responses that occurred after Carrie's massacre. The pared-down version here finds Sue Snell (Battlestar Galactica's Kandyse McClure) and others speaking to the police about what happened as part of a framing device.
Fuller also brought back some other elements excised from the book in the 1976 film, including meeting the father (Michael Kopsa) of Chris (Lost's Emilie de Ravin), a powerful lawyer trying to bully away the trouble his daughter got into by being a bully. Overall though, director David Carson (Star Trek: Generations) delivers a functional version of the story that's lacking in energy and longer than it needs to be.
Angela Bettis is quite good as Carrie and makes her distinct from Spacek's version, though it's notable how little Margaret resonates here. Despite being played by another great actress, Patricia Clarkson, she feels strangely peripheral thanks to a combination of being offscreen for long periods, and because Clarkson — perhaps in an effort by either herself, Carson, or both to not mimic Piper Laurie's bombastic performance — plays the role as oddly subdued.
There is one other aspect of Carrie 2002 that stands out, and that's the ending… Because Carrie White lives! Unlike King's book or the other adaptations, she doesn't die the night of the prom, but is instead saved by Sue, who sneaks her out of town. This ending was included because the Carrie TV-movie was actually intended as a backdoor pilot for a potential TV series, though that obviously didn't come to be.
Carrie: The Musical (2012 / 2015)
Perhaps not shockingly given its somewhat camp appeal, a bit of a cult following grew around the infamous flop that was the 1988 Carrie Broadway musical, leading to some unofficial productions being staged in the years afterward, including one at Emerson College (hello to my alma mater). But in 2012, the risky decision was made to officially bring Carrie back, this time as an Off-Broadway revival. Both Lawrence D. Cohen — whose ongoing connection to Carrie is pretty notable at this point — and the original composers, Michael Gore and Dean Pitchford, returned for what was a rather massive reworking of the show, attempting to make it more focused on the psychological drama aspects. Much of it was rewritten, with seven of the songs from the original production dropped and new songs replacing them.
And lo and behold, this time it went over well! The new version received far better reviews than the original, and going forward, this was now the version that would be used for future productions. The revamped Carrie musical would go on to 2015 runs in both London's West End and in Los Angeles, which were also well received.
The LA production was an immersive theater production that slightly tweaked the 2012 revamp's dialogue and songs, including restoring a few verses from songs that were there in 1988 but removed in 2012. The staging was much more grandiose, with gallons of blood dropped from the rafters, select floor seats that would be moved during the show with the action, and other immersive elements like some audience members getting to join in and dance at the prom (before all the death stuff, naturally). Its success would lead to a second limited engagement of the show later that same year.
A 2018 episode of Riverdale involved characters on that show performing in a production of Carrie, and included several songs from the production, meaning that showrunner Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa was once more involved with telling Carrie's story, in a manner of speaking, after writing the 2013 film.
Carrie (2013)
Carrie returned to movie screens for yet another remake in 2013, this time with an impressive pedigree that included director Kimberly Peirce — whose 1999 film Boys Don't Cry had received two Oscar nominations and ultimately secured Hilary Swank her first Academy Award — and a buzzed-about star in Chloë Grace Moretz.
There was some discussion at the time of Moretz simply being too attractive to play the unpopular Carrie, which felt overblown. Yes, King describes her in the book as a bit overweight and pimply — something that no adaptation has ever tried to replicate — but when she gets dressed up for the prom, he also makes it explicit that she looks genuinely beautiful, and it's made clear the things that make Carrie an outcast stem from her upbringing and demeanor, and not her looks. But the big issue with Carrie 2013 was simply its feeling of sameness, and that it was too beholden to De Palma's beloved movie instead of finding its own unique take.
Yes, it's the first version to include smart phones as part of a modern day bully's arsenal, but it's by and large echoing the 1976 film, including using enough of its structure and even dialogue from that film to the point that Lawrence D. Cohen received a screenwriting credit alongside the film's actual writer, Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, despite not writing anything new this time.
Once more, performances aren't an issue, with Moretz and yet another excellent actress as Margaret, Julianne Moore, having some strong moments playing off one another. Judy Greer is also an inspired choice to play Miss Desjardin, who feels a bit more prominent than in previous versions. Nevertheless, Carrie 2013 feels like a missed opportunity to really shake up the story by sticking too close to what came before.
Carrie (2026)
And that brings us to the newest version, as Carrie returns via a modern-day streaming series for Prime Video. Tackling Carrie yet again is obviously a tricky endeavor that on the surface makes fans wary given how much it's been done; just look at all of those examples above! But there's a reason to be optimistic, because this time the man guiding the series is Mike Flanagan, who not only has made several acclaimed series at this point — including The Haunting of Hill House and Midnight Mass — but is also a massive Stephen King fan who's already given us strong adaptations of King's work that include Gerald's Game and Doctor Sleep.
With the blessing of King himself, who's serving as an Executive Producer, Flanagan has greatly reworked the story, starting with having Carrie (Summer H. Howell) now just beginning school for the first time ever, having been hidden away at home by Margaret (Samantha Sloyan). With the story now taking place over an entire semester, Flanagan told IGN he felt like he had the opportunity to better focus on what modern-day high school kids deal with, including violence in school and "what cruelty and bullying can be in a world where every single one of those incidents and any mistakes you make in your formative years can be broadcast permanently for the world to see on the internet." Flanagan is also including glimpses of other young women with telekinesis in the series, noting that in the book, "King is explicit that [Carrie's] not alone in this," even if Carrie herself is unaware of that fact.
You can see the end result for yourself when Carrie debuts October 7.
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