Stephen King Hates This Martin Scorsese Movie — And It Saved His Life
Horror legend Stephen King despises Martin Scorsese’s Raging Bull — the very film widely credited with saving the director’s life — and insists nothing will change his mind.
File this under unexpected opinions: Stephen King, the guy who gave us Pennywise and The Shining, cannot stand Martin Scorsese's Raging Bull. And that is wild, considering that movie basically dragged Scorsese back from the brink and kept his career alive.
Stephen King vs. Raging Bull
King made it clear on X that there is no convincing him this movie is good. He didn't elaborate on why, just dropped the title like a mic and moved on, which is very him.
"RAGING BULL." — Stephen King on X, December 1, 2025
Meanwhile, critics have spent four decades calling it one of Scorsese's best. More on that whiplash in a second.
How a boxing movie pulled Scorsese out of a nosedive
Quick rewind: after the commercial flop of New York, New York, Scorsese spiraled. Before Raging Bull was even rolling, he was hospitalized following a drug overdose. Author Jay Glennie writes in 'Raging Bull: The Making Of' (via The Independent) that Scorsese was "bleeding from the mouth, bleeding from his nose, bleeding from his eyes." Near-death is not an exaggeration.
Robert De Niro, already tight with Scorsese, visited him in the hospital and delivered the kind of tough-love speech only De Niro could get away with.
"What is it you want to do? Do you want to die, is that it? Don't you want to live to see your daughter grow up and get married? Are you gonna be one of those directors who makes a couple of good movies and then it's over for them?"
That hit. Scorsese saw himself in Jake LaMotta's self-destructive streak and decided to make the film anyway, even though he was never a sports guy and had asthma as a kid that kept him far from the playing field. The ring, he realized, could stand in for everything — work, life, the grind of making a movie.
Making it like it might be the last thing he ever did
Scorsese later told No Film School that he shot Raging Bull like a final round — all gas, no safety net.
"I made it as if this was the end of my life. Over. Suicide film. I didn't care if I made another movie... In a way, it wiped me out. I had to start all over and learn again. Every day on the shoot, 'This is the last one, and we're going for it.'"
It worked. Raging Bull earned Scorsese his first Best Director Oscar nomination and effectively reset his trajectory. So yeah — the movie didn't just revive his career; it pretty literally saved his life.
How the project even got to him
This part is a great little industry tidbit: De Niro became obsessed with Jake LaMotta while reading about him during downtime on The Godfather Part II. He brought the idea to Scorsese, who was hesitant at first — again, not a sports guy — but eventually reframed the boxing as a personal allegory and went all in.
So, about King's stance...
King didn't explain why he hates it, and honestly, he doesn't have to — taste is taste. But it's hard not to clock the irony: one of the most acclaimed films of the 1980s, beloved by critics and film schools alike, is a hard pass for the master of horror. Meanwhile, that same film likely kept one of our greatest directors from burning out for good.
- Directed by: Martin Scorsese
- Cast: Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci (and yes, Scorsese pops up briefly)
- Release date: December 19, 1980
- IMDb: 8.1/10
- Rotten Tomatoes: 92%
- Worldwide box office: $23 million
- Production: Chartoff-Winkler Productions, Inc.
- Where to watch: Paramount+
King can hate it. That's his right. The twist is that Raging Bull is probably the reason Scorsese kept making movies for King to love — or not — in the first place.