Universal Looking To Relight King's FIRESTARTER

By Neil Upton / June 25, 2011

Now we really are scraping the bottom of the remake barrel with news that Universal and the Dino De Laurentiis Co. are looking to kickstart a new franchise based on one of Stephen King's lesser works Firestarter. You may remember the original film, released in 1984, starred a cherubic Drew Barrymore as the pyrokinetic poppet whom a government agency were hunting to harness her powers. It was previously brought back to the small screen in 2002 with Firestarter 2: Rekindled. De Laurentiis Co. Chairman Martha De Laurentiis told Variety;

"We see this as a unique, character-driven thriller with a supernatural edge, based on a timeless concept and enhanced by recent visual effects advances."

So translate this as 'people with superpowers are cool and we can blow stuff up real good these days.' Writer Mark L Smith (Vacancy, The Hole) is working on the script with the apparent intention of making it edgier this time around. No directors are attached at this time, but the studio are eyeing a start date for sometime next year.But wait, this is apparently not the only King remake they have in the pipeline. They are also looking to re-do the laughably bad Maximum Overdrive, which was originally directed by King himself (his only directing experience) from his short story Trucks and starred a young Emilio Estevez. The story concerns machines coming alive and trying to kill all around them. Lets be kind and say it didn't fare too well. Info is a little thin and I doubt if we'll be seeing this one any time soon.