Sam Raimi wants to direct a Stephen King movie adaptation

Well, his style would have been perfect to take over Creepshow, and there are a number of stories he could have adapted for that (in fact they did a psudo-sequel to Evil Dead on the creepshow series which featured his brother as an actor).

He specifically mentioned Night Shift, and considering his ability at creating fun but effective gross out gags, I think Graveyard Shift would make sense. But he also seems to be pretty clear that he doesn't wanna do a remake, or a story that's been adapted before. I can imagine a particularly fun and wild adaptation of Trucks/remake of Miximum Overdrive with his distinct shooting style, but it would seem to have to be influenced largely by the earlier movie for him to do it.

Battleground could be cool, but it was already a pretty cool episode of the generally not-so-good series Nightmares and Dreamscapes. Maybe The Boogeyman or I am the Doorway? They haven't been done before, and there's a lot of room for a filmmaker to interpret the tone and the plot there.

He also mentioned a Rob Reiner adaption that he would have liked to do. Obviously, there are 2, so you'd have to guess which one. I'm thinking Misery, because of it's snowy setting and isolated cabin location, both of which Sam Raimi obviously has experience with.

It's interesting to speculate because Raimi kind of has 2 different modes; the wild and fun brazen cartoonish camera work kinda thing (Evil Dead movies/Darkman/Drag Me to Hell) and the subdued serious drama (A Simple Plan/The Gift/For the Love of the Game), and of course sometimes those modes meet. But I could easily see him be drawn to doing something more along the lines of the Frank Darabont adaptations.

So in Night Shift there's also Strawberry Spring, which could use a lot of interpretation, but is essentially a cold/stark character study and serial killer mystery.

Stepping outside of Night Shift, I'd say The Jaunt is one that could be done in a lot of different ways. Maybe in The Death Room.

Or perhaps, even though it's been attempted already, maybe Sam Raimi, with his previous interest in gunslingers, is the right guy to try his hand at The Dark Tower.

I could see Tommyknockers along the same lines of what I said with regard to Trucks/Maximum Overdrive. It would have to contend with how silly and crazy it is, and the previous adaption.

Strawberry Spring is indeed very short so I would have to be expanded to a degree in order to make a feature length film. There was a multi-part radio drama style podcast adaptation recently. It was ok at best, but it sort of gives an idea as to how thar could be done.

1408 was a short story, not a novella, and I think serves as a pretty good example of how to take a character and scenario and add to it without changing things too drastically.

I feel similarly about The Night Flier, but I know that not many people feel the same.

Graveyard Shift is another example, that's really not any good as a movie, but draws out the obvious way to adapt that into a movie. It might have been better to stick more closely to the structure of the story, but they went with the easy route. But I could see a crazy Sam Raimi approach to that story with all sorts of fun and wild rat creatures.

That's if he's going for the fun and crazy exercise in style that he's so good at, because there's very little in the way of narrative.

I agree Raimi should do Needful Things in particular. The 1993 version was terrible, so a proper adaptation is definitely needful.

Yes, I meant to respond to that too. I haven't read that book, but thought the movie squandered a seemingly good premise.

But I've also heard that Stephen King considers the book to be a black comedy and that it's been misunderstood. 

It's a shame because they had a pair of great actors at the center of the movie, and it's my maybe my favorite on screen version of Castle Rock as a location I think. It really felt like the little town with that lighthouse on the outskirts.

Even though I like the original adaptation more than most, a Sam Raimi version of Thinner would be most delicious.

The Evil Dead is gorier/sicker than I really like, but it’s so well made (on a five-dollar budget) that I liked it anyway. Raimi’s direction in particular is stunning. I haven’t seen Evil Dead II, which is supposed to be even better, or Army of Darkness. And not horror, but I loved his wacky (but not “revisionist,” Wikipedia!) western, The Quick and the Dead.

Yeah that’s exactly why I would pick that one. The first one is meant to be straight up horror, right? The genre is not exactly my cup of tea so I thought the comedic ones would be a better place for me to start.

Evil Dead 2 is sort of part remake/recap, and part sequel, but it's way more comedic. It's a good bridge between those 2 different movies. It's still got horror imagery and has it's gore, but it's really where he starts introducing slapstick (later dubbed 'splat-stick' as a combo of the former word and 'splatter film), and overt comedy, including his clear 3 Stooges references.

It's definitely bloody, but it's also clearly, intentionally very much comedic.

I don't imagine you'll be lost. Army of Darkness is very different in that it takes place in another time or dimension or something, but Evil Dead 2 does lead directly into Army of Darkness... but neither is particularly heavy on plot or narrative.