To be quite honest I’d be more than happy to see a revival or sequel to Firestarter since Firestarter: Rekindled with Marguerite Moreau and Malcolm McDowell wasn’t the best movie, but it had a good idea. Charlie McGee had been on the run from the government all that time in the TV movie, but this time around it would appear that one of Stephen King’s best novels is going to be rebooted entirely. It’s not the first time this is happening obviously since It received the same treatment, though in all honesty, its first version was a TV miniseries. It sounds as though Zac Efron is starring as Charlie’s father, Andy, but there’s no word on any other casting at this point, which leads us to believe that things are being kept quiet for a pretty good reason since this idea has been tabled for a while, or been kept in development hell as the saying goes. However one wants to say it, people have been waiting for this movie to make a comeback, and with today’s effects and a great enough script, it could happen in a way that will impress a great number of people. One issue with any Stephen King story has usually been the ending, or some crucial part within the movie that makes less sense when it’s taken from the book, but hopefully we’ll see that quirk eliminated or fixed in this reboot.
Another thing that would be nice to see is how truly destructive Charlie can be since the buildup to the use of her power in the book was far more convincing than the movie was. It’s fair to say that the movie was working with a number of limitations that were difficult if not impossible to work around since the effects back in those days were more practical and in some ways quite a bit more dangerous than what might be used in this version. It’s fair to say that not everything should be CGI, but it’s bound to happen since the type of effects that Charlie can produce will no doubt be impressive and possibly a bit over the top since the point has to be made that she’s not only dangerous, she’s also a young girl that doesn’t have full control of her emotions or the power that comes bursting forth when she gets upset. This is a girl who’s been said to wield the kind of power that could crack the earth in half if she grew powerful enough, though whether this is a bunch of hyperbole or not is hard to tell. But since the movie is on course for production to start this coming June it’s very easy to think that we’ll be waiting until 2022 to see the result. There’s also the feeling that in order to get everything right that the pace isn’t going to be that slow, but it won’t be too quick either, as the desire to get it right and pay attention to King’s vision appears to be the desire of directors these days. At one point it was enough to get a Stephen King story made, marketed, and pushed to the people as quickly as possible, but that’s backfired in a few ways over the years, as The Dark Tower, which was an idea for quite a while, tanked horribly when it came out, and It: Chapter 2 disappointed in a way that was hard to deal with since like too many of King’s endings it flopped hard.
To be fair, every story that has been brought to a movie set has a chance to be great, but it needs someone in the director’s seat that can do something with it, a writer, or writers, that can adapt the book to a worthwhile screenplay, and actors that can make it come to life. The possibility for all of these elements to come together in a way that will create a great movie is necessary and possible, but somewhere along the way something usually happens that disrupts all of it, and whether it has to do with the producers, the executives, or those that really don’t have much business in the creative process, something ends up being mucked up beyond all belief. The big hope for Firestarter is that it will benefit from the mistakes of the past and build on them in a manner that will create a stronger movie that will impress the fans and give Stephen King’s story the respect that it deserves. Speaking as an author it’s hard to see a great story turned into a horrible to mediocre movie since losing the wonder and mystique that many stories come with is too easily done, and mucking about with the source material to complete a director’s vision can turn things to crap in a big hurry. There’s still a lot of expectation for Firestarter.
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