Between The Outsider, The Stand and the upcoming Lisey's Story and Chapelwaite, the small screen has been the primary home of Stephen King adaptations since the beginning of 2020, but fortunately it won't be too long before the author's work is back on the big screen and playing in a theater near you. After years of development at Blumhouse, the upcoming remake of Firestarter has been making its way through pre-production in the last few months, and now cameras are finally rolling. And though it will surely be a minute before we get to see some finished footage from the film, the studio has provided us with a brief and fiery glimpse of what it's like to be on set.
There is surely going to be a significant amount of work with fire on the set of Firestarter, and it seems the crew isn't wasting any time before diving into that material. Today is only day one on set, but as you can see in the video below posted by Blumhouse on Twitter, a person has already been set ablaze:
Based on the Stephen King novel of the same name first published in 1980, Firestarter tells the story of Andy McGee and his daughter Charlie – a pair of psychics on the run from a government agency known as The Shop. When Andy was a college student, he met his wife Vicky while participating in a clinical trial for a drug called Lot Six, and while most of the subjects died during the experiment, he walked away with the ability to mentally "push" people, and she developed telepathy. Charlie, meanwhile, has her gifts passed down to her genetically, and it's discovered that she can set fires with her mind a.k.a. pyrokinesis. Keeping close tabs on the family, The Shop attempts to abduct Charlie so that they can perform tests on her, but she is able to escape with her father, and together they try to find some kind of freedom while being hunted down.
As exciting as it is to hear that Firestarter has already started production, one odd thing about the news is that we only know about two actors who are a part of the movie's cast. Zac Efron signed on in September of last year to play Andy McGee, and it was back in February that we learned Rutherford Falls star Michael Greyeyes has come aboard to play John Rainbird – a psychotic mercenary who is hired by The Shop to hunt down Andy and Charlie, but secretly has his own intentions and motivations. This still leaves multiple key characters with question marks by their names, including Captain Hollister (the person who runs The Shop), Irv and Norma Manders (a couple who give the father and daughter shelter for a time), Dr. Joseph Wanless (the psychologist who ran the drug trial) and both Vicky and Charlie.
The film is being directed by Keith Thomas, who is coming off of his excellent debut feature, The Vigil, and he is working with a screenplay written by Scott Teems. Firestarter promises to be a fresh and different adaptation than the 1984 film starring Drew Barrymore, and it will be particularly interesting to see how it plays in an era when seeing characters with superpowers on the big screen is a common occurrence. Sadly we don't yet know when the movie will be released, as Blumhouse and Universal Pictures have not yet set a date, but that is news that we are hungrily anticipating.
