Apt Pupil is a 1998 American psychological thriller film based on the eponymous 1982 novella by Stephen King. The film was directed by Bryan Singer and stars Ian McKellen and Brad Renfro. In the 1980s in southern California, high school student Todd Bowden discovers fugitive Nazi war criminal Kurt Dussander living in his neighborhood under the pseudonym Arthur Denker. Bowden, obsessed with Nazism and acts of the Holocaust, persuades Dussander to share his stories, and their relationship stirs malice in each of them. The novella was first published in King's 1982 collection Different... Seasons, which also yielded The Shawshank Redemption and The Body. Producer Richard Kobritz sought to adapt the novella into a film during the 1980s, but two actors he invited to play Dussander died. When filming began in 1987, a loss of financing led to production being shut down. Forty minutes of usable footage existed, but production was never revived. In 1995, when rights to the novella returned to King, Bryan Singer petitioned the author for an opportunity to film the novella. With King's support, Singer filmed Apt Pupil with McKellen and Renfro in Altadena, California, in 1997.
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| Release date: | September 9, 1998 |
| Directed by: | Bryan Singer |
| Rated: |  |
| Runtime: | 111 Minutes |
| Producer: | Jane Hamsher, Don Murphy, Bryan Singer |
| Editor: | John Ottman |
| Music by: | John Ottman |
| Cinematography: | Newton Thomas Sigel |
| Screenplay by: | Brandon Boyce |
| Estimated budget: | $14,000,000 |
| Adapted from: | Apt Pupil |