Stephen King is one of the world's most popular authors with over 400 million copies of his books sold worldwide, over 60 of which got their respective big screen adaptations, be it as movies, or as TV shows. Despite his immense popularity, the literary critics weren't very fond of him, mostly because he writes within the horror genre, which is primarily attributed to pop-literature. Still, with such a grand bibliography of bestsellers dating from the 1970s to today, it's hard not to ponder the question: what is it that makes King such a popular, sought-after author? That'll be the main subject of this paper. Times have changed through the decades, but King remained one of the best-selling authors; both in the literary form, and in big-screen adaptations. I'll base my research on three of his bestsellers: Misery, Pet Sematary, and Carrie – which was also his first novel. All these pieces were already adapted on the big screen multiple times, which gives us the foundation for an in-depth iconological analysis and determining what makes King so interesting to his audience today just as much as it did almost fifty years ago. Hence, the backbone of this paper will be the iconological analysis of three Stephen King novels and their screen adaptations. That analysis will be used to, through a sociological prism, determine how King's work is interpreted in different ways (depending on which society or period we're talking about), and see if there are any universal sociological determinants that make King a world-renowned author.