First announced nearly a year ago, the reboot/remake of Stephen King‘s “Pet Sematary” seems to be gearing up to make some big moves.
The LA Times reports that writer Matthew Greenberg (“1408” also based on a King story, “Halloween: H20“) will soon be turning in a script. To refresh your memory, the story follows “a family that trades the city life for the country life in Maine, then discovers that they have moved near a pet cemetery that rests on an ancient burial ground. When the husband’s toddler son is killed in an auto accident, the father takes the boy’s body to the cemetery, where it is resurrected in demonic form.” Scary! With script in hand, Paramount will apparently take the project to “high-level” directors but we’re guessing they’ll probably end up with a cheap, slightly buzzworthy helmer (think Mikael Hafstrom or Jaume Collet-Serra).
Why all this sudden movement on a fairly schlocky King book? Well, he’s a bit of a hot property right now. Universal and Ron Howard are banking on a mega-franchise version of “The Dark Tower” that will feature a trilogy of films and a television series; the studio also has a “Firestarter” reboot in the works everyone seems to have forgotten about while Warner Bros. and CBS Films are teaming up to bring “The Stand” to the big screen. But as we were hinting at above, don’t expect Paramount to invest a boatload of money in this — it’s likely to turn out like every horror reboot with barely or unrecognizable stars running around in a $15-25 million picture.
We never understood the appeal of this story anyway and isn’t there a ton of King material that hasn’t been adapted for the screen yet? Maybe the studios just don’t like some of the author’s lamer books….
