Executive Veto: The original manuscript had Jimmy Cody get eaten alive by rats controlled by Barlow, but Doubleday refused to publish this and King had to rewrite it so that he was instead impaled by knives. (In his nonfiction book on horror, Danse Macabre, King admits that he later came to agree this was for the best, as in hindsight he found the death-by-rats scene to be too similar to "Graveyard Shift".)
Inspiration for the Work: Stephen King was inspired to write the book when he had his English class read Dracula, and became curious about what would happen if vampires came to America, specifically in a small town.
Limited Special Collector's Ultimate Edition: A huge (and hugely expensive) version of the book with deleted scenes was released by Centipede Press. Fortunately a trade version with the deleted scenes was later published.
Stillborn Franchise: King played with the idea of writing a sequel for years, at one point mentioning a possible opening with Callahan working at a soup shelter and a vagrant coming in telling him that it's not over at "the Lot". In the end, there was no sequel (apart from the short story "One for the Road", published in Night Shift) and King ended up continuing Callahan's story in The Dark Tower.
Working Title: King originally wanted to call the novel Second Coming, but his wife thought that made it sound like "a bad sex story".
The miniseries
Approval of God: Although this adaptation differs dramatically in a lot of different areas from the novel — notably in the depiction of chief vampire Mr. Barlow — Stephen King approved of it, and became friends with Tobe Hooper.
Awesome, Dear Boy: James Mason jumped at the chance of playing a servant of evil, loving the script. This was fortunate as he was producer Richard Kobritz's first choice for the role of Mr. Straker.
George A. Romero was originally approached to direct a feature film version, but after the announcements of Dracula (1979) and Nosferatu, Warner Bros. decided to turn it into a TV Mini Series. Romero dropped out, feeling he wouldn't be able to make the film the way he wanted to with the restrictions of network television.
Larry Cohen wrote the first draft of the movies script but producer Richard Kobritz said Cohen's script was "really lousy" and chose Paul Monash to write the screenplay. Cohen attempted an appeal to get some writing credit on the film, but he was rejected screen credit.
