Stephen King Can’t Stand This Denzel Washington Movie Based on Real-Life Story

While holding a status of the most adapted writer since Shakespeare’s times, Stephen King is also no stranger to serving as a pretty real movie critic, but sometimes it’s not all about praise and accolades.

Over the years, the writer has made it clear that he has no tolerance for films which somehow come to misrepresenting abuse victims by turning the whole plot line into a completely wrong direction.

Just like he always does, King didn’t shy away from proving the point by giving a couple of examples, with one of them being a pretty successful movie made by Denzel Washington back in the 2000s.

Washington’s Antwone Fisher Was Praised by Movie Critics and Crashed by Stephen King

Specifically, the film fell short in King’s eyes due to the fact that its premise of exploring the psychological trauma that abuse victims have to live on with is quite promising, yet later there comes a blatant thought of a possibility to just move on from this trauma and live happily ever after.

The writer publicly condemned the movie in his 2007 article in which he urged Antwone Fisher fans to not “throw a bunch of sentimental tripe at me and call it social commentary.” He continued calling the movie “annoying” and stating that the whole idea of it can’t be more wrong and overall is simply audacious.

Antwone Fisher is Based on a Real-Life Story

The movie released back in 2002 came as Denzel Washington’s directorial debut where he also got the leading role of Antwone "Fish" Fisher. Based on the latter’s autobiography, the film recounts the story of Fisher’s survival in an abusive environment of his own house where he was constantly and sexually harassed by his foster family’s niece.

Antwone Fisher had moderate success in the box office earning around $23 million with the budget of $12 million, but eventually got luckier with critics who gave the movie generally favourable reviews.

Source: Entertainment Weekly