Stephen King Hopes New Firestarter Movie Kicks Off Trilogy

While various Stephen King stories have gotten sequels and follow-ups, he never developed a sequel to his novel Firestarter, though he recently confirmed that he'd be interested in seeing what director of the latest adaptation Keith Thomas would do with a trilogy of films inspired by the story. There might not currently be any confirmed plans for such a franchise, but between the open-ended nature of this film's finale and the compelling world of figures with supernatural abilities, it would seem there's all sorts of avenues that could be explored in the future. Firestarter is in theaters and on Peacock now.

"The director has talked about Firestarter being the first movie in a trilogy about Charlie," King shared with Vanity Fair. "I'd love to see it. I would be perfectly down with that. Hopefully it would be good. Sometimes they are, and sometimes they're not."

With Paramount+ developing a prequel to the 2019 Pet Sematary, which is ground King hasn't covered, a possible Firestarter continuation wouldn't be the first instance of expanding a narrative outside of King's source material.

The film 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."

Thomas himself previously teased that he already has a few ideas in mind for how to continue the world of this movie.

"I'm always down, I'm always down. I think we've got all sorts of ideas of where it could go," Thomas shared with ComicBook.com of potentially continuing this narrative. "Obviously Stephen King didn't write a sequel. So all that would need to be explored, but I feel like we created a world in this, and some characters that I feel like their stories could definitely expand, expand and go on."

Firestarter is out now in theaters and on Peacock.

Would you like to see more film's exploring this narrative? Let us know in the comments below or contact Patrick Cavanaugh directly on Twitter to talk all things Star Wars and horror!