On February 9th, a trailer for the new adaptation of Stephen King's 1980 novel Firestarter was released. The upcoming Blumhouse film is directed by Keith Thomas, written by Scott Teems, and will star Ryan Kiera Armstrong as Charlie, with Zac Efron attached to appear as Charlie's father, Andy McGee. This will be the second big-screen adaptation of Firestarter, following the 1984 version, directed by Mark L. Lester and starred Drew Barrymore as Charlie McGee and David Keith as Andrew McGee. However, this new adaptation has a lot of potential to level up the story and deliver a movie that sets sparks alight, especially with John Carpenter attached as the reboot's composer.

The film's creators say the reboot hopes to remain faithful to the first adaptation while delivering something more authentic to the novel. Previously, Thomas said, "I look at [the original] film as a great example of filmmaking at the time in terms of adapting this book. It's very, very close to the book in terms of kind of the way it unfolds and the way the characters are introduced and come into it and come out of it. For me, it's great that it exists, and people who love it, I think, will still love it after this one. But I hope that they will love this one as well."

All Hail the Crimson King

To say King is having a renaissance fails to recall his decades' worth of consistent success. In the intervening years since his first novel Carrie released in paperback in 1975, King's prose has enjoyed continued literary success, along with plenty of large and small-screen adaptations. All of these onscreen adaptations King liked pretty well too, except Firestarter, which King once told American Film magazine was one of the worst of the bunch, saying:

Firestarter is one of the worst of the bunch, even though in terms of story it's very close to the original. But it's flavorless; it's like cafeteria mashed potatoes. There are things that happen in terms of special effects in that movie that make no sense to me whatsoever. Why this kid's hair blows every time she starts fires is totally beyond my understanding. I never got a satisfactory answer when I saw the rough cut. By that time, Dino [De Laurentis] was regularly asking me for input. Sometimes he'd take it. In that case...

The movie has great actors, with the exception of the lead, David Keith, who I didn't feel was very good... The actors were allowed to do pretty much what they wanted to. Martin Sheen, who is a great actors, with no direction and nobody to tell him -- and I mean there must have been literally no direction -- with nobody to pull him in and say, "Stop what you're doing," he simply reprised Greg Stillson [in The Dead Zone]. That's all there is; it's the same character exactly. But Greg Stillson should not be in charge of The Shop [secret government organization in Firestarter]. He's not the kind of guy who gets that job.

However, in more recent years, adaptations of King's work have grown even more sophisticated. Take, for example, the two seasons of Castle Rock on Hulu. This series wasn't a direct adaptation of any single King novel, novella, or short story. Instead, it incorporated many aspects of multiple King narratives into two brand-new stories. The first season drew heavy inspiration from "Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption" and The Dark Half (among many other King works).

Then, Castle Rock's second season told the origin story of Annie Wilkes, the antagonist of Misery, in a tale that wove in elements of Salem's Lot. And, again, the series drew on many other King works for inspiration – all things serve The Beam. After all, say true and say thank ya. Speaking of, when is that MCU/King crossover coming? Waugh!

Firestarter Reboot: A Level of The Tower?

Indeed, like many (if not all) of King's novels, Firestarter is rife with connections to his larger body of work. For one thing, the story follows Charlie, a child with pyrokinetic abilities. If you're wondering how many pyrokinetic characters there are in King's oeuvre, well, consider this: King is personally credited with popularizing the word "pyrokinetic," which translated from Greek means "fire + movement," with its use in Firestarter specifically cited as the term's point of entry into the larger consciousness this is even pointed out in a first season episode of the series Fringe!

As the story continues, Charlie and her father attempt to evade the agents of The Shop, a secret government agency whose experiments are responsible for giving Charlie her powers. This "pursuit and evasion" storyline is a favorite of King's. It reappears throughout his work, including in books like The Dark Tower VII: The Dark Tower and in the title story from the Everything's Eventual collection.

Michael Greyeyes Will Play Rainbird

True Detective and Blood Quantum (written and directed by Mi'kmaq filmmaker Jeff Barnaby) star Plains Cree actor Michael Greyeyes will play John Rainbird, portrayed as George C. Scott in the 1984 adaptation. In Firestarter, Rainbird is a relentless man who has been pushed into a violent life as an Indigenous assassin for The Shop. Because Greyeyes began his career as a ballet dancer at the National Ballet of Canada (and he is now the Artistic Director of Signal Theater), he fully commits his whole body to bring a raw emotional power to any project he works on.

By digging into the potential for a Firestarter adaptation that feels conscious that it's part of King's larger tapestry of narrative, the potential for a highly engaging new adaptation of the novel is off the charts. Will the team at Blumhouse deliver a movie that takes account of the many levels of the Tower? We all know what Roland Deschain of the Line of Eld would say: there will be water if God wills it.