We now know all three actors that will be making up to the McGee family in Blumhouse’s upcoming adaptation of the Stephen King novel Firestarter (buy a copy HERE). The previously announced Ryan Kiera Armstrong, who is playing “firestarter” Charlie McGee, and Zac Efron, who is playing Charlie’s father Andy, have been joined in the cast by Sydney Lemmon, who is taking on the role of Charlie’s mother and Andy’s wife Vicky.
Genre fans may have seen Lemmon in Fear the Walking Dead, Helstrom, or Velvet Buzzsaw. I have liked her performances in the stuff I’ve seen, so I’m glad to hear she’ll be part of Firestarter.
Written by Scott Teems (Halloween Kills), this take on Firestarter is being directed by Keith Thomas (The Vigil). It tells the story of
a young girl who develops pyrokinetic abilities and is abducted by a secret government agency that wants to harness her powerful gift as a weapon.
Also in the cast are Gloria Reuben, in an unspecified lead role, and Michael Greyeyes as the assassin Rainbird.
This Firestarter is coming to us from Blumhouse, Weed Road Productions, and Universal Pictures. Blumhouse founder Jason Blum is producing with Akiva Goldsman. Martha De Laurentiis serves as executive producer alongside Teems.
Here’s the description of King’s novel:
Andy McGee and Vicky Tomlinson were once college students looking to make some extra cash, volunteering as test subjects for an experiment orchestrated by the clandestine government organization known as The Shop. But the outcome unlocked exceptional latent psychic talents for the two of them—manifesting in even more terrifying ways when they fell in love and had a child. Their daughter, Charlie, has been gifted with the most extraordinary and uncontrollable power ever seen—pyrokinesis, the ability to create fire with her mind. Now the merciless agents of The Shop are in hot pursuit to apprehend this unexpected genetic anomaly for their own diabolical ends by any means necessary…including violent actions that may well ignite the entire world around them as Charlie retaliates with a fury of her own….
The novel was previously turned into a film directed by Mark L. Lester and starring Drew Barrymore, David Keith, Heather Locklear, Martin Sheen, George C. Scott, Louise Fletcher, and Art Carney in 1984. Copies of Lester’s Firestarter can be purchased HERE.