Carrie is the horror franchise that started with Stephen King's first published novel in 1974. It follows Carrie White, a bullied teenager from Chamberlain, Maine, who lives under the control of her religious fanatic mother, Margaret, and slowly discovers she has telekinetic powers. When a prom night prank douses her in pig's blood in front of the whole school, Carrie turns those powers on the town, and the night ends in fire and death.
The story has been adapted more times than most of King's work. Brian De Palma's 1976 film with Sissy Spacek is still the version most people picture, and it was followed by a 1988 Broadway musical, a 1999 sequel called The Rage: Carrie 2, a 2002 NBC TV movie, and a 2013 remake starring Chloë Grace Moretz. Mike Flanagan's Carrie series arrived on Prime Video on October 7, 2026, with Summer H. Howell as Carrie and Samantha Sloyan as Margaret, landing in the same year the De Palma film turns 50.
Stephen King wrote Carrie while working as a teacher in Maine, and he nearly gave up on it. He threw the early pages in the trash, and his wife, Tabitha King, pulled them out and pushed him to finish. Doubleday published Carrie on April 5, 1974, and the paperback sale that followed let King quit teaching and write full time.
The novel doesn't tell the story in a straight line. King mixes the main narrative with newspaper clippings, excerpts from books written after the disaster, and testimony from the investigation into what happened, so the reader knows early on that prom night ends in catastrophe.
Carrie White's powers surface after a traumatic moment in the girls' locker room, where her classmates mock her during her first period while she has no idea what's happening to her. Gym teacher Miss Desjardin punishes the girls involved, and Chris Hargensen gets banned from the prom when she refuses. Sue Snell feels guilty and asks her boyfriend, Tommy Ross, to take Carrie to the prom instead.
Chris and her boyfriend, Billy Nolan, rig a bucket of pig's blood over the stage and dump it on Carrie right after she's crowned prom queen. Carrie snaps, seals the gym, and uses her powers to destroy it and most of the town. She goes home and kills her mother after Margaret stabs her, then dies in the street with Sue Snell beside her.
Brian De Palma's Carrie came out in 1976 with Sissy Spacek as Carrie and Piper Laurie as Margaret White, and both earned Academy Award nominations for their roles. The cast also included Amy Irving as Sue Snell, Nancy Allen as Chris Hargensen, William Katt as Tommy Ross, and John Travolta as Billy Nolan. The movie renamed the gym teacher Miss Collins, played by Betty Buckley, and ended on the dream sequence where Carrie's hand bursts out of her grave, a jump scare horror movies have been copying ever since.
Carrie became a Broadway musical in 1988, with Linzi Hateley as Carrie and Betty Buckley switching from the gym teacher in the film to Margaret White on stage. It closed after just five performances and became a well-known Broadway flop, though a reworked version was revived off-Broadway in 2012.
The Rage: Carrie 2 follows Rachel Lang, played by Emily Bergl, a teenager who turns out to be Carrie's half-sister through their shared father and has the same telekinetic powers. Amy Irving returns as Sue Snell, now a high school counselor who recognizes what's happening to Rachel because she saw it happen to Carrie.
NBC's 2002 Carrie starred Angela Bettis as Carrie and Patricia Clarkson as Margaret, with a script by Bryan Fuller. It kept the novel's investigation structure but changed the ending, with Sue Snell reviving Carrie and helping her escape town. NBC intended the movie as a backdoor pilot for a series that never got made.
Kimberly Peirce directed the 2013 remake, with Chloë Grace Moretz as Carrie and Julianne Moore as Margaret White. It moved the story into the smartphone era, with the locker room bullying filmed and posted online, but otherwise stayed close to the 1976 film's structure.
Mike Flanagan wrote and ran the 2026 Carrie series for Prime Video and directed four of its eight episodes, with Stephen King serving as an executive producer. Summer H. Howell plays Carrie White and Flanagan regular Samantha Sloyan plays Margaret. The cast also includes Siena Agudong as Sue Snell, Alison Thornton as Chris Hargensen, Amber Midthunder as Miss Desjardin, and Matthew Lillard as Principal Grayle. The series uses its longer runtime to spend more time with the students and teachers around Carrie, and all eight episodes premiered together on October 7, 2026.
Flanagan's Carrie breaks from every earlier version by bringing other witches into the story, and Carrie isn't fully in control of herself during the prom massacre because her friend Emaline, played by Thalia Dudek, is. I think it's a really good twist, and I hope we get more of Emaline and how she and Carrie differ if the show gets renewed.
Sissy Spacek played Carrie White first in 1976, followed by Linzi Hateley in the 1988 musical, Angela Bettis in the 2002 TV movie, Chloë Grace Moretz in the 2013 remake, and Summer H. Howell in the 2026 Prime Video series. Margaret White has been played by Piper Laurie, Betty Buckley, Patricia Clarkson, Julianne Moore, and Samantha Sloyan.