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First trailer for Blumhouse's Stephen King pic 'Firestarter' hits theaters & Peacock in May
Firestarter will light up theaters and Peacock Friday, May 13.
Smoke 'em if you got 'em! Universal Pictures and Blumhouse can help light up those cigars with the first fiery trailer for the studios' modern adaptation of Stephen King's Firestarter. The upcoming film (helmed by The Vigil's Keith Thomas) will receive a hybrid rollout in theaters and on Peacock this spring. And get this: horror legend John Carpenter (Halloween, The Thing) composed the score with Cody Carpenter and Daniel Davies! The musical trio is best-known for their sonic work on David Gordon Green's Halloween reboot.
Scott Teems (a co-writer on Halloween Kills) penned the screenplay, which tells the story of Charlie (Ryan Kiera Armstrong), a young girl with dangerous pyrokinetic abilities she can barely control. She's been on the run with her parents — Andy and Vicky (played by Zac Efron and Sydney Lemmon) for a decade — but their luck runs out when a shadowy government agency known as The Shop dispatches a ruthless operative (Michael Greyeyes) to track down the family and kidnap Charlie. Andy has done his best to train his daughter to harness her powers. However, that's easier said than done when Charlie turns 11 and threatens to go nuclear.
Kurtwood Smith (Amityville: The Awakening), John Beasley (The Purge: Anarchy), and Gloria Reuben (Mr. Robot) co-star.
Watch the Stranger Things-esque trailer below:
“I was always a big fan of King’s book,” Thomas told SYFY WIRE last year. "And I liked the '80s movie. When I was presented with the idea, I was really excited to give it this interesting, new approach that I hadn’t seen in the original film, that I thought was there in the book." The filmmaker later added: “Firestarter is dealing with psychic powers and how a little kid with this crazy ability can really become something complicated for her parents."
His top priority, Thomas explained, was to dig into the relationship between Charlie and her parents. "How do you parent when you’ve got a little girl who can melt someone’s face off when she gets angry?" he mused. "How do you parent on the run, when there is a company called The Shop after you, that wants to vivisect you, experiment on you?"
First announced in 2019, this new take on Firestarter (based on the eighth book King ever published) kicked off production last May. Ryan Turek, Gregory Lessans, Scott Teems, J.D. Lifshitz, Raphael Margules, and the late Martha De Laurentiis, serve as executive producers. Jason Blum and Akiva Goldsman are producers.
Firestarter arrives in theaters and on Peacock Friday, May 13. The poster below is almost certainly a loving nod to the original 1984 film adaptation starring a young Drew Barrymore.
Universal Pictures & SYFY WIRE are both owned by NBCUniversal.
