The 2021’s TV shows alone prove that Stephen King is undergoing something of a Renaissance, with the author’s back catalog being mined for content almost as much as it was back in the early ‘90s.
Despite this fact, one of King’s most critically acclaimed stories has never received a feature-length screen adaptation. Originally published in 1994, “The Man in the Black Suit” was seen by reviewers as one of King’s most impressive contributions to the genre and even has an intriguing period setting that makes it stand out among the writer's oeuvre. Nonetheless, the story has yet to receive a movie adaptation and likely never will.
Anthologized alongside “1408” in the Stephen King short story collection Everything’s Eventual, “The Man in the Black Suit” was published in The New Yorker in 1994. Acclaimed upon release, “The Man in the Black Suit” went on to win the World Fantasy Award and earned the coveted O. Henry Award, leading many fans to wonder why has the story never received a movie adaptation. However, the brevity and ambiguity of “The Man in the Black Suit” may offer an explanation to this inquiry.
The Man In The Black Suit Explained
The story of “The Man in the Black Suit” sees an old man recall a disturbing incident from his youth when he encountered the titular threat. A simple tale, the story opens with the boy waking up from an afternoon nap while fishing alone. He finds himself accompanied by a strange, gaunt man who begins telling him horrible things about his future and eventually threatens to eat him. Like fellow Stephen King villain Randall Flagg, the man soon reveals himself to be more than human as he exposes rows of razor-sharp teeth. The boy is chased from the riverbank into the forest and, after initially presuming the man was some sort of killer, soon the protagonist is convinced that his teeth and unsettling appearance mean he is the devil in disguise. Fortunately, the boy escapes with his life, but “The Man in the Black Suit” ends with him as an old man terrified at the prospect of the monster returning.
With many of his short stories, Stephen King borrows from older traditions to create modern homages to what's come before and “The Man in the Black Suit” falls under that umbrella. Readers of literature will recognize the story as King's modern take on the classic "Devil in the woods" short story subgenre. Popularized by American literary giants such as Nathaniel Hawthorne ("Young Goodman Brown") and Washington Irving ("The Devil and Tom Walker"), it usually involves a person meeting a strange, sinister man in the wilderness and either denying him or striking up a Faustian bargain with the Devil.
The Man in the Black Suit’s Real Meaning
While “The Man in the Black Suit” is a deeply creepy story on a literal level, the tale also has an easy-to-discern metaphorical meaning that makes it all the more frightening. Like It’s villain Pennywise, the monster of the story is both a literal toothy threat and an embodiment of more existential fears. It is heavily implied that the man is the Devil and, as such, the older protagonist’s fear is of dying (and going to Hell), rather than literally meeting the same man in the suit. In metaphorical , the hero is afraid of his past catching up with him, as embodied by his near-miss childhood escape.
The Man in the Black Suit’s Only Adaptation
A short film from 2004 is the only adaptation of "The Man in the Black Suit" to date and was quickly forgotten. Curiously, in the years since its release, the actor playing its titular antagonist (John Viener) went on to star in the cult kids hit Salem’s Lot received both movie and television adaptations, the screen legacy of “The Man in the Black Suit” is still limited to this unspectacular short almost three decades after its initial publication. The reasoning behind this has less to do with the underwhelming reception of the short film, however, and more to do with the tone and style of Stephen King's short story.
Why The Man in the Black Suit Has Never Received A Movie Adaption
Despite its critical acclaim, “The Man in the Black Suit” is too sparse a story to sustain a full-length adaptation. Not only that but, being set in the vaguely defined (but distant) American past, the story is a period piece with an unclear setting. Stephen King’s many 2022 adaptations prove that almost anything the author writes is being considered for the big or small screen in the near future, but the ambiguity of the setting of “The Man in the Black Suit” and the brevity of its action make a movie version a less-than-promising prospect. It's framed as old old folklore or modern urban legend, something that could happen to anyone at any time, hence its horror. A movie that expands on the story would likely rob the tale of its suspense and its terrifying impact, since seeing more of the man or learning the boy’s backstory would detract from the simplicity of the tale.
Similarly, further explaining the story’s setting is bound to annoy some readers. Some might imagine that the tale takes place in the relatively recent past of the ‘50s or ‘60s while others familiar with the aforementioned classic tales may have envisioned the late 1800s, setting the creators of an adaptation up for failure when it comes to pleasing King’s fans. With King himself deriding adaptations like Graveyard Shift, the pressure is high on writers and directors who hope to bring the writer’s work to life.
Could The Man in the Black Suit's Movie Work?
The unclear period setting of “The Man in the Black Suit" would make an adaptation a more ambitious and expensive undertaking while making a feature-length story of the brief tale would likely rob it of its ambiguity. These ingredients would almost inevitably result in a feature accused of padding a story that was brief by design and over-explaining a threat that was left ambiguous on purpose. As such, “The Man in the Black Suit” remains unadapted for good reason, and the fact that the classic tale is one of Stephen King’s most well-regarded pieces of short horror fiction is proof that some stories should stay on the page, rather than evidence that it needs a screen retelling any time soon.
