"Өлім аймағы: 1983 жылғы фильмнің жасалу тарихы"

1983 film by David Cronenberg
Lorimar eventually closed its film division after a series of box office failures, and soon after, producer Dino De Laurentiis bought the rights to The Dead Zone. He initially disliked Boam's screenplay and asked King to adapt his own novel. De Laurentiis then reportedly rejected King's script as "involved and convoluted"; however, David Cronenberg, who ultimately directed the film, said that he was the one who decided not to use the script, finding it "needlessly brutal". The film was finally on track to be made when De Laurentiis hired producer Debra Hill to work with Cronenberg and Boam. including plot points about Johnny Smith having a brain tumor. as it was King's first choice. Cronenberg initially wanted Nicholas Campbell to portray Johnny, but the director wound up casting him as the Castle Rock Killer instead. Cronenberg also wanted Hal Holbrook to portray Sheriff Bannerman but De Laurentiis objected.

The financial failure of Videodrome occurred during the filming of The Dead Zone. Shooting started in early January 1983 and took place in the Greater Toronto Area and the Regional Municipality of Niagara of Cronenberg's native Ontario, Canada. The so called Screaming Tunnel, located in nearby Niagara Falls, Ontario, was also used as the backdrop for one scene. The gazebo was built by the film crew and donated to Niagara on the Lake. On Metacritic, the film has a score of 69 out of 100 based on 8 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun Times gave the film three and a half stars, describing The Dead Zone as by far the best of the half a dozen cinematic adaptations of King's novels to that date. He praised Cronenberg's direction for successfully weaving the supernatural into the everyday, and noted believable performances by the entire cast, especially Walken: "Walken does such a good job of portraying Johnny Smith, the man with the strange gift, that we forget this is science fiction or fantasy or whatever and just accept it as this guy's story." Janet Maslin of The New York Times referred to the film as "a well acted drama more eerie than terrifying, more rooted in the occult than in sheer horror." Robin Wood stated that it was the first film by Cronenberg that he could admire and called it a "healthy development". Dave Kehr of the Chicago Reader was more critical of the film, describing it as "By no means a bad film, just a disappointingly bland and superficial one in which director David Cronenberg relinquishes the one thing that had always set him apart from his Canadian colleagues: his willingness to follow his intuitions rather than the logic of a script."

The film grossed $20.8 million in the United States and Canada). Worldwide, it earned theatrical rentals of $16.3 million.