Stephen King‘s a pretty cool guy, if you didn’t know. Not only has the master author set up a program to allow students to use the rights to his novels for just a dollar, but Stephen King had also done the same dollar deal with Remedy Entertainment and Alan Wake.
Speaking to Eurogamer, Remedy’s Sam Lake recently revealed he had “really, really, desperately wanted” to be able to open Alan Wake with a quote from King himself. After all, there were so many references to the famed Maine author in the game, so why not go the extra mile?
Of course, Remedy did get that quote from King, and according to Lake, the developer just had to pay a dollar in order to use it. “It’s my understanding he wanted $1 for us to get the rights to use it. [It was] so very generous.”
For those curious (and who don’t remember), the quote from King is as follows:
“‘Stephen King once wrote, ‘Nightmares exist outside of logic, and there’s little fun to be had in explanations; they’re antithetical to the poetry of fear.’
In a horror story, the victim keeps asking why – but there can be no explanation, and there shouldn’t be one. The unanswered mystery is what stays with us the longest, and it’s what we’ll remember in the end.’”
The quote in question comes from 2008 article penned by King for Entertainment Weekly entitled “Why Hollywood can’t do horror”, discussing the failures of studios to properly capture fear while trying to appeal to mass market audiences.
Obviously, things have changed a bit for King since that time, thanks to the two It films (among other King adaptations). It’s also not the first time that King and video games have been in the same sentence. Sierra On-Line founders Roberta & Ken Williams revealed last year that they had tried to get King on board for a video game, but he turned it down. The result, however, was the classic Phantasmagoria.
Alan Wake 2 is due out for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series, and PC via the Epic Games Store on October 17.