Production is officially underway on Blumhouse's Firestarter remake.To mark the occasion, producer Jason Blum posted a video from the film's set to Twitter, writing "Walking into the first day of production like..." The clip shows one of the movie's stunt performers walking around on-fire; needless to say, they have a fireproof suit on for protection.
An adaptation of Stephen King's 1980 sci-fi/horror novel of the same name, Firestarter centers on Charlene "Charlie" McGee, a young girl with pyrokinetic abilities who's pursued by a shady government agency seeking to harness her powers for its own purposes. The story was previously adapted into a film in 1984, with Drew Barrymore playing Charlie opposite David Keith as her father Andy. In 2002, the movie received a followup in the form of a miniseries titled Firestarter: Rekindled, with Marguerite Moreau (The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers) portraying the grown-up Charlie.
The Firestarter remake will star Zac Efron as Andy and Michael Greyeyes as John Rainbird, a hitman who's hired by the government to find and capture Charlie. Keith Thomas (The Vigil) is directing the film based on a script by Scott Teems (The Quarry) -- a writer who also worked on Blumhouse's slasher sequel Halloween Kills.
In the past, Thomas and producer Akiva Goldsman have described the Firestarter remake as being more faithful to King's source material than the 1984 movie adaptation. "I think there's a lot of stuff to explore in [the Firestarter novel] that King obviously is hinting at throughout the book that I don't see as much in the original film that I think we can really dive into," said Thomas.
"Firestarter is one of the last great, either unmade or un-remade, Stephen King novels that have become classics," said Goldsman in a separate interview, describing it as one of the author's "most intimate" horror stories ever. "Pyrokinesis is a really fascinating idea when it comes to the expression of hidden feelings," he added.
The official synopsis for Firestarter reads as follows: "A young girl develops pyrokinetic abilities and is abducted by a secret government agency that wants to harness her powerful gift as a weapon."
Directed by Keith Thomas, Firestarter stars Zac Efron and Michael Greyeyes. It has yet to receive a release date.
Source: Twitter