Lindsey Beer to direct surprise Pet Sematary sequel as the series refuses to stay dead

Is there a pop culture property that lends itself better to pessimistic reactions to how often it’s resurrected than Pet Sematary? Because holy cow, other than the events of Pet Sematary, the various Pet Sematary movies are the clearest indication that anyone could possibly need that sometimes dead is indeed better. The 1989 film is pretty much a classic, but Hollywood keeps going back up to that graveyard to rebury Stephen King’s book in hopes of another hit movie crawling out, but only a soulless husk ever returns—most recently in 2019 with Jason Clarke and Amy Seimetz, though that feels like it happened a decade ago.

Now, Paramount is going back to the spooky pet cemetery for a sequel to the 2019 reboot, with screenwriter Lindsey Beer (Chaos Walking, Transformers: The Last Knight) set to direct after working on the most recent draft. That comes from Deadline, which notes that the original film was directed by Mary Lambert, suggesting that the Pet Sematary series was always meant to be a female-led franchise (alright, sure). The story doesn’t have any plot details, but it does say that the movie will be going straight to the Paramount+ streaming service. We don’t want to jinx it, but maybe this time Pet Sematary will come back as good as it ever was, without that evil, murderous edge that the kid and the wife and the cat had? It has to, right? Right? It’s never worked before, but it has to work this time! Who cares what that old man says, it’ll be fine! We’ll just bury Pet Sematary (2019) in the magic grave, then it’ll come back and everything will be okay! HA HA HA!