David Duchovny Resurrects Stephen King’s Pet Sematary In Prequel First Look
Stephen King’s 1983 horror novel Pet Sematary has seen no shortage of adaptations. The novel spawned three films — a 1989 adaptation, a 1992 sequel, and a 2019 remake — along with a 1997 BBC Radio 4 dramatization. Now, Deadline reports that a prequel to the story, called Pet Sematary: Bloodlines, is in production.
David Duchovny is starring in Pet Sematary: Bloodlines, a prequel film set before the 2019 remake.
Plans to create a prequel to Pet Sematary were announced just before the 2019 remake was released, and the film was green-lit two years later. Jeff Buhler, who wrote the script for the 2019 adaptation, also wrote the script for Bloodlines. While previous directors Kevin Kölsch and Dennis Widmyer will not be returning for the project, producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura is returning.
The story of Pet Sematary: Bloodlines is based on an unreleased chapter of the original novel. The chapter takes place during the childhood years of Jud Crandall, a major character throughout the rest of the book. In the film, Crandall is forced to confront a sinister family history after discovering a secret buried within his hometown.
In the original Pet Sematary novel and all of its adaptations, Jud Crandall is an elderly man who helps bury a deceased cat belonging to the main character, Louis Creed, in an ancient Mi’kmaq burial ground. Burying the cat there causes it to come back to life. However, the cat comes back… wrong.
While we don’t have many details about the plot of the prequel films, it might end up covering two childhood incidents described by Jud in Pet Sematary.
King has stated that Pet Sematary scared him the most out of all the books he has written.
First, he describes resurrecting a dog that had died when he was a kid. Then, he describes an attempt to resurrect a dead World War II soldier, which resulted in the veteran’s reanimated corpse terrorizing the population.
The original novel was written by Stephen King when he was writer-in-residence at the University of Maine, living next to a major road where the traffic frequently killed dogs and cats.
After his family cat was killed, he imagined the scenario of resurrecting the cat, which comes back as a malevolent creature. King has stated that Pet Sematary scared him the most out of all the books he has written.
Many of Stephen King’s books are more highly-regarded than Pet Sematary, such as It, The Stand, and The Shining. However, the story is compelling enough that both adaptations of the novel were box-office successes — though neither was a critical hit. 1992’s Pet Sematary 2, however, was despised by critics and audiences alike.
Where You Can Watch Pet Sematary: Bloodlines
Pet Sematary: Bloodlines will not be coming to theaters — will release on Paramount+ this October. Its release will be part of Paramount’s “Peak Screaming” collection — an annual collection of scary movies and TV shows that are released in the days before Halloween each year.
Paramount no doubt hopes that Pet Sematary: Bloodlines will be more successful than the other adaptations not based directly on the book. We will have to wait until October 6 to find out for sure.
