Firestarter Director and Star Talk Reviving the Stephen King Story for a New Generation

Author Stephen King has been such a force in the world of horror for so long, that narratives that have already been brought to life for new mediums are being revisited and reimagined in fresh ways. His novel Firestarter was first published in 1980 and then brought to life for a 1984 film, with Blumhouse Productions and Universal Pictures returning to the material for a new take on the tale of terror. Starring Ryan Keira Armstrong and directed by Keith Thomas, the filmmaking team was tasked with delivering an experience that honored the source material and the previous adaptation, while also finding new narrative threads to explore. Firestarter lands in theaters and on Peacock on May 13th.

“When I first signed on to it, I had read the script and I knew the book, I’d read the book several times. I’d seen the original film countless times, and so I knew the story,” Thomas recalled to ComicBook.com. “And so when I read [Scott] Teems’ script, I saw what he was doing, the changes he was making, the interesting ways he was taking it. And I thought it was very appealing.”

He continued, “To me, the novel’s in print, it’s always around. Everybody can read it at any time and get that story. The 1984 film is very close to the book in terms of the beats and the way the plot operates. And I thought that exists, it’s wonderful, there’s an amazing Blu-ray of it that anyone can buy and see. I want to do something that’s a little different that is both a remix of the same story, in terms of telling it just from a slightly different direction, and it gives me an opportunity to, I don’t want to say put my imprint on it, but it’s more to approach it from a perspective that I feel like speaks to myself as a filmmaker and the stories that I want to tell.”

For more than a decade, parents Andy (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.

The original movie was a breakout role for a young Drew Barrymore, with Armstrong noting that she did revisit that take on the material, despite how scared of it she was. 

“I did see it beforehand, I actually watched like 99.999% of it, through little clips, because it’s great to have that inspiration, but I didn’t watch the whole thing because, oh, my gosh, I am so bad with horror movies, I cannot watch them,” the actor revealed. “And it’s funny, I can’t watch them but I love to make horror movies, which is just ironic. But, of course, I also want it to be distinct and also different and also a renewed version of Firestarter, and it to be unique and its own. And Keith did an amazing job of doing that as well.”

As far as how Thomas knew Armstrong could handle the tasks at hand, he detailed, “It was honestly her first audition. It was that very first one and it was the level of, it was both control of her emotion, but also the depth of it that I was seeing. It was just registering right there, it was … The key to this role is a kid who’s in middle school, and I think all of us remember middle school as being very difficult, in terms of puberty and all these changes and these things happening, and Ryan was able to really embody and communicate this inner turmoil and this sea of changes going on, that I thought, ‘Okay, that’s great. We want to be in that crisis, we want to feel that.’ And Ryan was excellent at being able to show it pretty instantly without dialogue. It was really just there in the face.”

Bringing Armstrong into the fold also allowed her to make personal contributions to the overall experience to help create a more authentic journey for her character.

“There was a lot of moments like that, and that’s why Keith was so amazing with collaborating and with building Charlie, it’s just because there were so many things that we kind of worked into the script that I was just like, ‘Oh, well this is interesting,’” Armstrong detailed of including her own contributions to the film. “And he said, the first day, he was like, ‘If there’s anything you want to change, do it.’ And so I had so much freedom and ability to change whatever I wanted to, and I’m really thankful for that because it’s not often you can get that.”

Thomas continued, “That was important to me to be able to give her the flexibility, because I have never been, nor will I ever be a 12-year-old girl, but she is, and I wanted her to be able to guide those decisions in terms of reactions and expressions and emotion so that it felt, not just for her performance in terms of she’s comfortable, so she knows where things are going, but so that it’s believable, so that people buy it.”

As if adapting Stephen King wasn’t exciting enough for Thomas, the film also earned a score from acclaimed auteur John Carpenter, who had previously been attached to adapt the novel before the 1984 version came together, adding an interesting layer of context to this new film.

“It was something where, when we were in early stages development, I had floated this idea because, obviously, it’s Blumhouse, they’ve got the Halloween trilogy that they’re completing now, and I knew they had a connection to Carpenter and I thought, ‘Hey, it’s worth a shot,’” Thomas recalled. “So I had floated the idea out there and it was, of course, that’s never going to happen. So I, whatever, moved on. But then in production, I got word that the conversation had started, and then a few weeks later, there I am on a phone call with John Carpenter. And, for me, it was like a Scanners, head-explosion moment of, ‘I can’t believe this is happening.’”

He continued, “But then when I pulled myself together, and John’s very much a straight shooter, by-the-book guy, ‘I’m here to do a job, let’s get the job done.’ But still, it was an incredible experience working with him and Cody [Carpenter] and Daniel [Davies] and just … Because John’s not only an incredibly gifted composer, but he’s also one of the legends of horror filmmaking, he knows when he’s scoring something, how it plays within the film itself. So that dialogue was very easy. It’s filmmaker to filmmaker. I’m, of course, nowhere near his caliber, but filmmaker to filmmaker, then we’re able to discuss these ideas in ways that feel very easy.”

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

Are you looking forward to the new movie? Let us know in the comments below or contact Patrick Cavanaugh directly on Twitter to talk all things Star Wars and horror!