New Adaptation of Stephen King’s Firestarter Snags Director

Fresh off the announcement that a new adaptation of Stephen King’s The Dark Half is in development, an update on another King property’s journey to the big screen has been announced. Collider reports that The Vigil writer/director Keith Thomas has been tapped to step behind the camera for the new adaptation of the 1980 novel, writer Scott Teems (Halloween Kills) will pen the script. Previously adapted into a film in 1984, the new version is in development at Blumhouse Pictures and Akiva Goldsman’s Weed Road. In the Fade filmmaker Fatih Akin was previously attached to the new film but has seemingly departed the project.

King’s official site describes the story of novel, “The Department of Scientific Intelligence (aka ‘The Shop’) never anticipated that two participants in their research program would marry and have a child. Charlie McGee inherited pyrokinetic powers from her parents, who had been given a low-grade hallucinogen called ‘Lot Six’ while at college. Now the government is trying to capture young Charlie and harness her powerful firestarting skills as a weapon.”

One of the more notable elements of the original Firestarter is that it starred a young Drew Barrymore, with the film helping pave the way for a lifetime of impressive performances.

If the concept of the story sounds familiar, it might be because the concept was a heavy influence on Stranger Things, which depicts a young girl who has telekinetic powers and escapes from a secretive government organization.

“We’re big movie nerds that’s what we wanted to do,” said Matt Duffer at San Diego Comic-Con, describing the genesis of the show he created with his brother Ross.

“We started to get into television as it became more cinematic,” he added, Variety reports.

The brothers shared that they asked themselves, “what would be the ultimate long movie Spielberg directing a big, fat Stephen King book. That was the dream, that was the ambition,” Ross said.

The train on new Stephen King adaptations left the station in 2017 after WB’s reboot of IT became the highest grossing horror movie of all time. Since then, adaptations of Gerald’s Game and 1922 debuted on Netflix, plus a new Pet Sematary, IT: Chapter Two, Doctor Sleep, and In the Tall Grass have all been released to varying degrees of critical acclaim. New adaptations of ‘Salem’s Lot, The Long Walk, The Tommyknockers and From a Buick 8 are also all in various stages of development. While you wait for those, stay tuned for details about the new Firestarter as we learn them.

Which other King stories do you think deserve another adaptation? Let us know in the comments below!