The Dark Half - Adaptations

Adaptations

The novel was adapted as a film, The Dark Half, by George A. Romero in 1990, and was released in 1993. It was filmed in part at Washington and Jefferson College and other locations in southwestern Pennsylvania. It starred Timothy Hutton as Thad/Stark, Michael Rooker as Alan Pangborn, and featured Julie Harris as an eccentric colleague of Thad's who provides some vital information about the supernatural.

The computer game The Dark Half, based on the novel, was designed by Symtus and published by Capstone in 1992. Another game titled The Dark Half: Endsville was announced at E3 in 1997, but the game was apparently not released. An unusual feature of the novel was the appearance of characters Rawlie and Billie DeLesseps, who had previously appeared in a rarely printed short story, "The Crate", which was adapted into a segment of the anthology film Creepshow. Thad's co-worker Rawlie was the main character in the segment, and in The Dark Half, they are described to look exactly like actors Hal Holbrook and Adrienne Barbeau, the actors who portrayed the characters in that segment. Oddly, the events of The Dark Half's late 1980s setting clearly postdate the events in "The Crate"'s late 1970s setting.