Stephen King's 'Rose Red' Is A Pretty Good Haunted House Miniseries That Fell Into Obscurity
'Rose Red' Was Almost 'The Haunting'
Photo: The Haunting/MGMNetflix's The Haunting of Hill House series isn't the first time Shirley Jackson's 1959 novel has been adapted to the screen. Back in the late '90s, Stephen King and Steven Spielberg were collaborating on a plan to remake Robert Wise's 1963 film The Haunting, which was itself an adaptation of Jackson's novel. King started writing the script, but ultimately the two titans couldn't agree on what direction they wanted the film to go in - King opted for more scares while Spielberg pushed for more action and spectacle.
They shelved the project, and King bought back the rights to the finished script. Spielberg's vision for the project was eventually made into the 1999 remake of The Haunting.
'Rose Red' Was Delayed By Tragedy
Photo: ABCWhen Stephen King bought the rights to the finished Rose Red script from Steven Spielberg, he shopped it around to some of the producing partners he had worked with before. He ultimately reached an agreement with Mark Carliner, who had worked with King on two previous miniseries - The Shining and Storm of the Century. When the deal was made, they planned for Rose Red to be a feature film. Before he could turn in the final script revisions, though, King was hit by a van and nearly killed.
The accident had a significant impact on King, finding its way into much of his later work, and it also delayed the production of Rose Red. When King returned to writing fiction after more than a month in the hospital, the first thing he started working on was Rose Red. It bloomed from a feature film to a TV miniseries because, as King said to the LA Times, "My problem with scripts has never been not being able to find enough material. My problem is getting 'em down to a shootable length."
King Originally Intended For 'Rose Red' To Be One Of His Last Works
Photo: ABCFollowing the van accident in '99 that nearly took his life, King planned to retire from writing horror fiction. Rose Red was meant to be one of his last writing projects. "When you get done, you get done," he said to the LA Times, discussing his plans to retire while he was "still on top of [his] game." As we all know, King ultimately chose not to retire; he has published several new books and had many more of his works adapted to film since Rose Red in 2002.
Even so, watching Rose Red, you can see how he might have imagined it as a kind of swan song - an opportunity to get a bunch of his favorite inspirations and obsessions up onto the screen before he called it a day.
'Rose Red' Pulls From 'Hill House' And The Winchester Mystery House, Too
Photo: Gent Geen / Wikimedia Commons / Public DomainConceptually, Rose Red may have started as a take on Shirley Jackson's novel The Haunting of Hill House, but with Stephen King at the keyboard, it quickly took on a life of its own. While the finished script still holds many elements that are familiar to fans of Jackson's novel (a barrage of stones falling on a house, one guest who is the last heir to the homestead, several psychic researchers gathering in a "haunted" house to try to prove - or disprove - the existence of the supernatural once and for all), King also drew from other sources when writing his screenplay.
One of his biggest inspirations was the real-life Winchester Mystery House in San Jose, CA. Famous (or infamous) for the fact that its former owner, Sarah Winchester, heir to the Winchester firearms fortune, continued to build onto it until her death. The Winchester House is surrounded by ghost stories and was the subject of its own haunted house film in 2018, simply called Winchester.
King said he first read about the Winchester House in a Ripley's Believe It or Not comic, and he wanted to tell a story about "a house that was actually bigger on the inside than the outside." In King's tale, the titular mansion continues to add rooms even after its owner disappears within its walls, creating new haunted spaces as it snuffs out the lives of those who venture inside.
'Rose Red' Moved To Seattle To Use Thornewood Castle
Photo: ABCWhile most of King's stories are set in Maine, Rose Red takes place in Seattle, WA. This was so filmmakers could use the real-life Thornewood Castle estate, which stands near the shore of American Lake. Thornewood Castle provided the exteriors - and a few of the rooms - for Rose Red, including vine-wrapped walls, stained-glass windows, and gardens designed by Frederick Olmsted (one of the architects behind Central Park).
Once the filmmakers settled on a location for shooting, King's screenplay transplanted the mansion from south of Tacoma, WA, to the middle of downtown Seattle. "He wanted people trapped in a house right in the middle of the city," production designer Craig Stearns told the LA Times.
Craig R. Baxley Directed 'Rose Red'
Craig R. Baxley got his start in Hollywood as a stuntman on TV shows like Police Story, Gemini Man, and M*A*S*H. He then directed a couple of late-'80s action spectacles like Action Jackson and I Come in Peace. He was also the second unit director on the original Predator.
Before Rose Red, he had previously worked with Stephen King on the miniseries Storm of the Century and afterward went on to direct Kingdom Hospital and The Diary of Ellen Rimbauer.
'Rose Red' Stars Some Familiar Faces
Photo: ABCThey weren't all big stars at the time, but habitual TV viewers will probably recognize at least some of Rose Red's extensive cast, including Emily Deschanel (Bones), Melanie Lynskey (the King-inspired Hulu series Castle Rock), Jimmi Simpson (Westworld), Matt Ross (American Horror Story), and Matt Keeslar (The Middleman), to name a few.
Providing 2002-era star power were Nancy Travis (Three Men and a Baby, So I Married an Axe Murderer) and horror mainstay Julian Sands (A Room With a View, Warlock).
One Of The Actors Actually Died During Filming
Photo: ABCActor David Dukes, who plays the unscrupulous Professor Carl Miller, actually died while playing tennis during the filming of Rose Red. Though Dukes's scenes were not yet complete, director Craig R. Baxley - who had extensive experience as a stunt performer - was able to finish the scenes.
This was partly thanks to a model cast of the actor's face that had been created earlier for makeup and special effects.
King Himself Makes A Cameo As A Pizza Delivery Guy
Photo: ABCBefore Stan Lee became known for showing up in all the Marvel movies, Stephen King had a penchant for cameo appearances in films adapted from his work.
In Rose Red, this includes a brief appearance by King as a pizza delivery guy.
'Rose Red' Had An Intense Marketing Campaign
Photo: ABCWith a marketing budget of $200,000, the team behind Rose Red pulled out all the stops, attempting to make the house and its history feel more real by releasing a tie-in novel, The Diary of Ellen Rimbauer: My Life at Rose Red, purportedly written by one of the original residents of the house.
The novel's real author, Ridley Pearson, was kept secret at the time, and many people speculated King himself had written it. The novel was later adapted into a TV movie of its own in 2003, also directed by Craig R. Baxley.
'Rose Red' Is Subdued And Spooky, But Not Afraid To Go Over-The-Top
Photo: ABCRose Red is slow to start - it is a miniseries, after all - and the main group of characters doesn't get into the house until near the beginning of Part 2. Nevertheless, while Rose Red may focus on the psychological makeup of the people inside the home and the obsessions of the people who built it, there are plenty of ghosts and weird happenings to go around.
A spirit possesses a house, bloody refrigerators appear in psychic visions, and statues even come to life. If a certain theme or cliche has appeared in a previous haunted house movie, chances are it's also somewhere in Rose Red's 255 minutes.
'Rose Red' Has Ties To Other King Works
Photo: ABCAnother trademark of Stephen King's work is that many of his stories have ties to one another, and Rose Red is no exception. Several of the characters share last names with characters from other King novels, the backstory of the young telekinetic Annie resonates with King's novel Carrie, and Rose Red is mentioned in the 2001 book Black House, which King co-wrote with Peter Straub.
King had even experimented with the same idea of a house that keeps building itself in his short story "It Grows on You," which was originally published in 1973 and later reprinted in his 1993 collection Nightmares & Dreamscapes.
These Days, 'Rose Red' Isn't Always Easy To Find
Photo: ABCRose Red was released at a time when great television was mostly restricted to basic cable and HBO. Netflix and other streaming services didn't yet exist. Fueling the film's descent into relative obscurity is the fact that it has become difficult to find compared to many of Stephen King's other cinematic adaptations.
While Rose Red was released on DVD in late 2002, it has yet to get a Blu-ray version and remains unavailable on most popular streaming services. Picking up a copy of the DVD online can run you anywhere from relatively cheap (around $15) to ridiculously expensive ($150).
The Miniseries Is Mostly Forgotten
Photo: ABCRose Red was a hit when it aired, pulling in nearly 20 million viewers. Though critical consensus hasn't always been kind (Rotten Tomatoes gives it 45% from a meager 11 reviews), many called it some variation of "inconsequential fun" if not necessarily groundbreaking, as Ron Wertheimer did in The New York Times.
But while many other Stephen King properties have maintained cult followings and seen resurgences in popularity (and even recent remakes), Rose Red has been left behind by the groundswell of King fervor. Those who have the gumption to seek it out, though, will find a solid spook house effort with plenty of unmistakable King touches.
