'Firestarter': Stoke the flames with 2 first look clips from fiery new Stephen King adaptation

The wild and twisted imagination of Stephen King returns to the big screen this Friday with the release of Universal Pictures and Blumhouse's adaptation of Firestarter.

To help stoke the *ahem* flames of excitement, both studios debuted a pair of first look clips, which don't waste any time in showing off the pyrokinetic abilities of Charlie McGee (Ryan Kiera Armstrong), a young girl on the run from sinister organization calling itself The Shop (longtime King readers will know they pop up as the villains numerous times throughout the author's various works). In addition to featuring Zac Efron as Charlie's protective father, Andy, and Michael Greyeyes as a mysterious operative of The Shop, the clips also provide little snippets of the score, which was composed by legendary horror maestro, John Carpenter, and his fellow Halloween associates — Cody Carpenter and Daniel Davies.

Try not to melt your computer screen with the clips below:

Adapted for the screen by Scott Teems (a co-writer on last year's Halloween Kills), Firestarter was directed by Keith Thomas, who made a real splash with his feature debut, The Vigil, a novel horror flick inspired by Jewish folklore. Sydney Lemmon (Helstrom), Kurtwood Smith (Amityville: The Awakening), John Beasley (The Purge: Anarchy), and Gloria Reuben (Mr. Robot) round out the cast.

During a recent interview with STACK, Thomas revealed that he wanted the fiery effects to be practical wherever possible. Of course, all the necessary precautions were taken to protect the cast and crew from getting burned.

"That was a lot of planning," the filmmaker said. "It's very dangerous to work with some of this stuff, but a lot of it was preparation. However, it's amazing when you're there on set and you're watching it, you're like, 'Wow! This is powerful, but we have it under control.' And then when you see it in the film, it looks wildly out of control as if it was a very dangerous thing. Which I love about fire."

"Keith Thomas made the movie and the book actually come to life on set," explained Armstrong. "I mean, the prop house on set...one room looked like a normal room and the rooms beside it had air tanks blowing things off walls. It was really cool."

Teems Ryan Turek, Gregory Lessans, Martha De Laurentiis, J.D. Lifshitz, and Raphael Margules executive produced the film, with Jason Blum and Akiva Goldsman serving as producers.

Firestarter arrives in theaters and on Peacock this Friday — May 13.