Stephen King’s ‘Firestarter’ to Set the Screen Ablaze Once More With Upcoming Remake
The Overlook Film Festival just began its inaugural proceedings last night, inviting cinephiles and horror enthusiasts to take in some film with a singular location for a backdrop: The Timberline Lodge at Mount Hood, Ore., better known to you as the Overlook Hotel and the setting of Stephen King adaptation The Shining. One could scarcely imagine a scene more apropos for the revelation that another big King remake is in the works, so Blumhouse (you know, the studio behind every horror blockbuster of the last few years) head Jason Blum and director-writer Akiva Goldsman took full advantage of their unique surroundings for a major announcement. And in the immortal words of Nelly, it’s getting hot in here.
Deadline now relays last night’s news that Goldsman and Blum have gotten the wheels a-turning on a remake of Firestarter, the 1984 film adapting King’s novel about a child imbued with the terrible power of pyrokinesis. In the original movie, an apple-cheeked Drew Barrymore portrayed little Charlie McGee, a impetuous 9-year-old prone to setting anyone who displeased her on fire with her magic brain. A government agency hopes to make use of her special gifts for weaponized applications — the Midnight Special, as we call it around these parts — and a race to save the girl from both the feds and herself breaks out in short order.
The movie’s a good time, and hopefully the remake will work out better for Goldsman than the longtime writer‘s first directorial effort, 2014’s hilariously awful Winter‘s Tale. (Early reviews of Stephanie, the movie that Goldsman had come to Overlook to unveil, were largely positive in a promising early signal.) Firestarter will almost certainly contain fewer Pegasuses, so Goldsman’s already off to a strong start.