Stephen King's Firestarter to be rebooted, story of girl who starts fires with her mind to finally get some "edge"

Universal is planning to revive Firestarter, the Stephen King-based story of a young girl with pyrokinetic power on the run from a sinister government agency known as The Shop, a concept that producer Martha De Laurentiis describes as “timeless”—you know, like Cinderella. King’s novel was adapted to film once before in 1984, with George C. Scott (playing a Cherokee hitman) and Martin Sheen chasing a 9-year-old Drew Barrymore on screen, and off screen shamefully losing to her in all-night drinking contests. While the film already spawned a miniseries follow-up, 2002's Firestarter 2: Rekindled, this time out producers hope to develop Firestarter as a whole new franchise—because if something is worth doing, it’s worth doing again and again and again—while also giving the main character “a little more edge,” because exploding cars and buildings with your mind is such a sanitized, Reagan-era form of rebellion.