Stephen King is probably the most famous horror writer of all time. He is also an extremely prolific author whose work has been turned into countless films and TV shows - many of which failbut some of them are amazingly great. When you think of Stephen King, there are works that immediately come to mind, such as "The Shining", "Carrie" or maybe even "The Shawshank Redemption". Something like The Dead Zone, on the other hand, tends to get overlooked, which is too bad. King's story centers on Johnny Smith, a man who gets into a car accident and wakes up from a coma five years later, now armed with the power to see the future and the past by touching people or objects. Beyond that, however, man's life is chaos; his one true love has moved on and started a family with someone else, and he continues to have visions of a politician who will eventually become president and start a nuclear war.

The Dead Zone received a masterpiece film adaptation in 1983and David Cronenberg directed a cast that includes Martin Sheen and the fantastic Christopher Walken. Then, in 2002, the story was adapted as a USA Network TV series starring Anthony Michael Hall and created by former Star Trek writers Michael and Sean Peeler. This version of The Dead Zone was primarily a police procedural, with Johnny (Hall) helping the local sheriff (and his ex-fiancée's husband) solve crimes using his powers, all while having visions of a future apocalyptic event that includes a congressional candidate. The biggest difference between King's novel and the series took the form of a fundamental change in Johnny's character, as he went from a tragic hero doomed to sacrifice himself to prevent his vision from happening to basically a cop with a sidekick.

Although it was far from short-lived, The Dead Zone did come to an unexpected end after six seasons. What happened?

After 80 episodes spread over six seasons, "The Dead Zone" ended with a big cliffhanger in 2007. On top of that, Johnny's son JJ (Connor Price) also had a vision of nuclear armageddon, only this time it wasn't said congressman who caused the end of the world, but Johnny himself. This would have been a fascinating twist for the upcoming seventh season, but in the end, USA chose to pull both "The Dead Zone" and "4400," another popular show that aired on USA Network at the time (one that eventually received a reboot). This is unfortunate because The Dead Zone was, along with "Monk", the show that put the network on the map when it launched in 2002.

Reportedly, the US canceled these shows because they were older and more expensive to make. Moreover, the network believed that axing them would give its then-new series a better chance to build its audience (which sounds even sillier when you consider that it could have had "The Dead Zone" and "4400" instead ” as the lead investors and, as such, a way to attract viewers to his latest shows).

"We wish we could keep all of our great shows alive forever," Jeff Wachtel, then executive vice president or original programming in the US, said in a statement released at the time (via Reuters). "But we feel we need to give some of our new shows a platform to grow, and it's with great sadness that we say goodbye to two shows that have had great success and helped create a resurgence of original programming on our network and across cable." ."