"The Dead Zone" (1983) was the first movie David Cronenberg directed in which he didn't write the screenplay himself. Initially five scripts were written, one of them was by Stephen King, which Cronenberg thought was "Terrible, really ugly unpleasant slasher script" and which, if he had filmed, King's fans would have torn him apart for doing & considered Cronenberg as the one who destroyed the work. Andrzej Żuławski wrote one of the scripts. Even though, Cronenberg didn't like any of the scripts, he selected the one by Jeffrey Boam, which he thought was best of the five. Afterwards, it was modified and filmed.
("David Cronenberg: Interviews with Serge Grünberg", Serge Grünberg, 1992, "Cronenberg on Cronenberg", Edited by Chris Rodley, 1992 & AFI Catalog)