Reboot of Stephen King’s Pet Sematary Gets 2019 Release Date

Well, it’s only taken nearly three decades for the bad taste of one of Stephen King‘s worst film adaptations to fade. While Pet Sematary remains one of King’s great underappreciated novels, its original 1989 film entirely excised vast chunks of the book — unfortunately, they were the parts that contained the connective threads. Variety is reporting that a reboot has been greenlit at Paramount and given an official release date: April 19th, 2019.

Relative newcomer tag team of Kevin Kolsh and Dennis Widmyer have been tapped to direct the film. Jeff Buhler and David Kajganich are writing the screenplay. The original’s adaptation was written by King himself, so perhaps having a fresher team on writing will wind up being a boon to the story. It’s still surprising that Paramount continues to bring in near-freshman-level writers and directors when so many experienced teams are left languishing on the sidelines.

It was in 2013 that the idea of a reboot might be being seriously considered, when Juan Carlos Fresnadillo (28 Weeks Later) was being eyed as director with Lorenzo di Bonaventura producing. To be fair, even in ’13, it was Kajganich (though then in tandem with Madd Greenberg rather than Buhler) writing. So this ’19 script may be an outgrowth of that earlier same effort.

No word yet on casting, as pre-production is only now just getting under way.