Stephen King Once Sued Over This Sci-Fi Horror Movie — Now It's Free to Watch

If you missed the early-90s VR thriller that made Stephen King yank his name off the poster, good news: you can watch it free right now. And yes, I do mean the one with Pierce Brosnan and a very wild interpretation of a King short story.

Where to watch it (free, legally)

Shout! Studios put the entire 1992 movie 'The Lawnmower Man' on YouTube. No rental, no paywall, the whole thing streaming for free on their channel.

The basics, at a glance

• What it is: A 1992 sci-fi horror movie directed by Brett Leonard and distributed by New Line Cinema.
• Cast: Pierce Brosnan (Dr. Lawrence Angelo), Jeff Fahey (Jobe Smith), Jenny Wright (Marine Burke), Geoffrey Lewis (Terry McKeen), Jeremy Slate (Father Francis McKeen), and Dean Norris (credited as The Director).
• Premise: A brilliant scientist obsessed with perfecting virtual reality software runs out of patience with animal testing and recruits a local gardener with cognitive disabilities for his experiments. It goes... about how you think it will.
• Sequel: 'Lawnmower Man 2: Beyond Cyberspace' came out in 1996. Brett Leonard did not return; Farhad Mann took over directing.

Wait, how is this a Stephen King movie?

Short version: it kind of isn't. The film was initially supposed to adapt King's 1975 short story, but the production struggled to stretch that material into a feature. The fix was very Hollywood: they rewrote an unrelated script, slapped the title on it, and called it a day. The final film shares a name and little else with King's original work.

The lawsuit (and the money)

Despite the drastic detour from the source, the movie was released as 'Stephen King's The Lawnmower Man.' King was not amused. In 1992, he sued to get his name removed from the title and marketing, arguing the film had almost nothing to do with what he wrote.

"bore no meaningful resemblance"

A federal judge sided with King. His name was stripped from the advertising, and he received a $2.5 million settlement. It's one of those inside-baseball cases people still cite when studios get cute with author branding.

If you want a quick plot vibe before you hit play

Pierce Brosnan plays Dr. Lawrence Angelo, a genius tunnel-visioned on building next-level virtual reality tech. After the lab animal trials go sideways, he pivots to a human subject: Jobe Smith (Jeff Fahey), a soft-spoken, slow-witted gardener. What starts as cognitive enhancement turns into something far more dangerous, because of course it does.

If that mix of early-90s sci-fi ambition and King-adjacent chaos sounds like your kind of Friday night, the full movie is sitting there on Shout! Studios' YouTube channel, free to stream.