Pet Sematary: Bloodlines Director Discusses How Daunting It Was to Take on Stephen King

With this year's Pet Sematary: Bloodlines, writer/director Lindsey Beer was stepping into unique territory. Though the film is technically based on the Stephen King novel of the same name, it's mostly just pulling from one particular story in its pages and is largely a prequel to the main story. The film even flashes things back, answering major questions about the world of Pet Sematary that other movies never even considered. Speaking with ComicBook.com in an exclusive interview to promote the home media release of Pet Sematary: Bloodlines, we asked Beer how daunting of a task it really was to approach Stephen King's material knowing that she would need to 

"It was a lot of work," Beer confirmed. "It was a lot of reading and rereading the book aand just pulling out anything that I could where I felt like, 'Oh, this is an interesting thread. This could go here, this would go there. I could repurpose this here.' So it was a combination of just taking what was hinted at in the book and just expanding on it."

There's also the potential for more stories out of Pet Sematary. Speaking in a previous interview with CmicBook.com, Beer teased that she has a "murder board" of all the people that live in Ludlow and the history of the town, with ideas for tons of stories that haven't shown up on the screen just yet.

"For me, I felt like the Timmy Baterman chapter offered so much in terms ... So in the book, it says that Timmy Baterman and Jud's encounter with Timmy Baterman is the reason that the evil's targeting him as an old man. It also says at the end of the book that Jud is the guardian of the woods, which, to me, suggested this greater mantle or responsibility that we don't actually know about in the movies. We just see him smoking and drinking on the porch mysteriously. So I felt like, as opposed to just a side story, this could really tell much more about the origin of this character, what role he's actually played in this town, what is the nature of this evil? Where does it come from? How was the town founded? Really treat this as a Ludlow origin story as opposed to a side adventure. "

Pet Sematary: Bloodlines is described as follows: "In 1969, a young Jud Crandall has dreams of leaving his hometown of Ludlow, Maine behind, but soon discovers sinister secrets buried within and is forced to confront a dark family history that will forever keep him connected to Ludlow. Banding together, Jud and his childhood friends must fight an ancient evil that has gripped Ludlow since its founding, and once unearthed has the power to destroy everything in its path."

The movie stars Jackson White (Tell Me Lies), Forrest Goodluck (The Revenant), Jack Mulhern (Mare of Easttown), Henry Thomas (The Fall of the House of Usher), Natalie Alyn Lind (The Goldbergs), and Isabella Star LaBlanc (True Detective: Night Country). David Duchovny and Pam Grier also appear in the prequel.

Pet Sematary: Bloodlines is out to buy or rent on Digital and will be released on Blu-ray and 4K Ultra HD December 19th.