Remember how the other day we said that Hollywood was kind of rediscovering Stephen King, after a lacklustre few years, screen-wise? Well here's more proof: Paramount are apparently in the early stages of exhuming **Pet Sematary**, **adding to a roster of upcoming King that already includes The Dark Tower and The Stand.
Previously filmed from King's own screenplay by Mary Lambert in 1989 (with a sequel by the same director following in 1992), Pet Sematary involves the Creed family, who move into a new home near an ancient Native American burial ground which can reanimate the dead. "Sometimes dead is better" though, as kindly neighbour Fred Gwynne explains. By which he means "always", since whatever comes comes out of the ground (Church the cat; little boy Gage; Lt. Tasha Yar) becomes a homicidally mental shadow of what went in.
This time round, the screenplay is being adapted by Matthew Greenberg, who made quite a decent fist of 1408: the one about John Cusack being attacked by a hotel room, based on a King short story from 1999. The original Pet Sematary wasn't that well received, so a remount actually wouldn't be too unwelcome, but it's a tough story to crack, given its utter bleakness. And we can't imagine any remake wringing the same horror from the flashback scenes with the Zelda character...*
It's just at the script stage, so there's nothing more to see here currently. Mary Lambert's Mega Python vs. Gatoroid, starring Debbie Gibson and Tiffany, premiered on SyFy a few days ago.
*It won't have a theme song by The Ramones either.