You wouldn’t think it’d be that difficult for Hollywood to sort out a remake of Stephen King’s Pet Sematary, but while it’s been in the works for years, it’s never actually happened. At one point it seemed close to getting off the ground, with a screenplay by Mike Werb and Michael Colleary (Face/Off), which even had George Clooney circling it to star.
However that never happened, but Paramount isn’t about to give up. They recently attached super-producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura (Transformers, G.I. Joe, Constantine), and now comes news (via THR) that 1408 scribe Matthew Greenberg has been hired to script his second stab at a Stephen King tale.
The novel was first published in 1983, and became a mildly successful film in 1989, and sees the Creed family newly arrived in a small town. After their cat gets run over, they bury it in a local pet cemetary, only for it turn turn up in their house, alive but now incredibly vicious. Then, when they’re young son is killed, they decide they want him back, but get far more than they bargained for. As the tagline for the movie said, ‘Sometimes… dead is better.’
As well as 1408, Greenberg has numerous other horror credits under his belt, including Mimic and Halloween: H20. He’d seem to be a good choice, although considering the difficulty the remake has had getting off the ground (dead children, especially those that comes back to life in evil form, makes Hollywood a bit squeamish), there’s no guarantee this will ever get made, especially as no director is attached as yet.