Zac Efron to star in Firestarter reboot, but probably not as the little girl who starts fires

Oh, you thought a global pandemic would slow down Hollywood’s Stephen King adaptation machine? The global pandemic couldn’t even stop a new version of The Stand, a book that involves the survivors of a global pandemic being saved by the literal hand of God. Nothing can stop Hollywood’s Stephen King adaptation machine, as evidenced by a report from Deadline about Zac Efron starring in Blumhouse’s new adaptation of King’s book Firestarter—which was previously adapted into a 1984 movie starring a very young Drew Barrymore.

Efron probably won’t be playing the Drew Barrymore character, the eponymous firestarter (the story is about a little girl with pyrokinetic abilities and a government agency trying to turn her into a weapon), but it seems likely that he’ll be playing the girl’s similarly super-powered dad (David Keith in the original movie). This new Firestarter has gone through some different iterations with different filmmakers attached, but Variety says the current director is The Vigil’s Keith Thomas, with Akiva Goldsman—who was once set to direct—still worryingly on board as a producer. If you don’t know why that’s worrying, we’d like to point you to the god-awful Dark Tower movie he produced had a co-writer credit on. Nobody involved in that disaster should be allowed near a Stephen King adaptation again.