Firestarter Writer Reveals Prologue Sequence Cut From Film

The latest adaptation of Stephen King’s Firestarter has been in the works for years, with a variety of filmmakers having been involved in attempts to bring the project to life, which means various plans for the adaptation have been changed or entirely scrapped during that development process. While the character of Rainbird has earned a mysterious backstory in previous tellings of the story, writer of this year’s reboot Scott Teems recently confirmed that one version of the movie included a prologue that would have shed light on the figure, though it ended up being cut from the project due to budgetary constraints. Firestarter lands in theaters and on Peacock on May 13th.

“Well, over the course of about six years and three directors, there’s lots of different things that came in and out of the script,” Teems shared with ComicBook.com about abandoned story ideas. “Each director would bring his own vision for it, his own ideas for scenes, stories. I wrote several different ones. Originally there was this prologue of Rainbird in the mountains of Peru, assassinating someone. I ran the gamut. Which was a cool idea, but then it was like, ‘Oh yeah, we’re making a small movie. I forgot about that.’”

He continued, “And so every director from Akiva Goldsman to Fatih Akin to Keith Thomas had his own ideas for what it could be. And my job was to ride that wave. And so what’s cool was the final product had ideas from everyone, really, and a lot of each director’s ideas survived and coalesced, and then Keith took that and made it his own vision. But my job was just to keep us on track. Each new set of ideas would come in and I was just trying to keep us on the right track.”

A key component of this take on Firestarter is that audiences are only given the information absolutely necessary for the story, which means that we don’t need to know Rainbird’s history to comprehend how threatening he is in this adventure. Similarly, it also means that there’s lots of storytelling potential that a follow-up film could possibly explore.

The new Firestarter is described, “For more than a decade, parents Andy (Zac Efron; Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile; The Greatest Showman) and Vicky (Sydney Lemmon; Fear the Walking Dead, Succession) have been on the run, desperate to hide their daughter Charlie (Ryan Kiera Armstrong; American Horror Story: Double Feature, The Tomorrow War) from a shadowy federal agency that wants to harness her unprecedented gift for creating fire into a weapon of mass destruction. Andy has taught Charlie how to defuse her power, which is triggered by anger or pain. But as Charlie turns 11, the fire becomes harder and harder to control. After an incident reveals the family’s location, a mysterious operative (Michael Greyeyes; Wild Indian, Rutherford Falls) is deployed to hunt down the family and seize Charlie once and for all. Charlie has other plans.”

Firestarter lands on Peacock and in theaters on May 13th.

Would you like to see more of Rainbird’s past? Let us know in the comments below or contact Patrick Cavanaugh directly on Twitter to talk all things horror and Star Wars!