Blumhouse’s remake of Stephen King’s Firestarter gets a director

It was more than a year ago that we learned Blumhouse was developing a reboot of Stephen King‘s 1980 novel Firestarter, which was first adapted in 1984 with Drew Barrymore and George C. Scott playing a Native American. Back then, Hollywood Hack Akiva Goldsman was attached to direct, but, considering his involvement in last summer’s disastrous Dark Tower adaptation, let us all be thankful that the Batman and Robin scribe has bowed out of the production. Stepping in, The Hollywood Reporter notes, is German filmmaker Fatih Akin.

Akin’s In the Fade, an anti-Nazi revenge tale (scored by Josh Homme!) starring Diane Kruger, won the Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film last year, so, hey, we’re better off than we were with the ding-dong who wrote and directed 2014’s Winter’s Tale. Goldsman, it should be noted, was also previously attached to the Doctor Sleep adaptation that Mike Flanagan (Gerald’s Game, Hush) is now helming. Again, let us all be thankful that this dude is being shooed the hell away from all future King adaptations.

Of course, he’ll still be a producer alongside Jason Blum and Martha de Laurentiis, who served as an associate producer on the original Firestarter and was married to the late Dino De Laurentiis, a long-time advocate of King’s work.

Firestarter tells the story of a young girl, Charlie, with pyrokinetic abilities. Sought after by a secret government agency, Charlie tries to find escape with her father, who possesses a weaker version of her powers, which, the book posits, are positively apocalyptic in nature. Writer Scott Teems will adapt, which is great news considering he previously worked on the Sundance Channel’s lovely Rectify, as well as Netflix hit Narcos.

Below you can revisit The Losers’ Club‘s exhaustive breakdown of Firestarter, which represented a turning point of sorts for King as a novelist.