07-01-2010, 03:47 AM
Stephen King fan site Lilja's Library is on the cinematic remake case, getting the latest on where those long-mooted new takes on "Pet Sematary" and "IT" are.They spoke to screenwriter David Kajganich (Blood Creek, Invasion) and here's what he had to say...On Pet Sematary: After I turned in my first draft, Paramount went through a top-down regime change and I was given a new executive who had creative ideas I just couldnât stand behind. They wanted to appeal to younger audiences, so there was talk of making a teenaged Ellie the main character, and etc. It was really heartbreaking, but thatâs how the process works sometimes. The studio was gracious enough to let me out of my contract and the project was dormant at the studio until very recently.The current news is that Paramount has restarted the process with a new producer and writer (Lorenzo Di Bonaventura and Matt Greenberg). I wish I could tell you something about their approach, or how itâs going, but Iâm entirely out of the loop now.It, meanwhile, is still in the works and still being groomed as a feature-length film at Warner Bros: I think the biggest difference is that weâre working with about two-thirds the onscreen time they had for the miniseries. That sounds dire, I know, but it doesnât necessarily mean two-thirds the amount of story. Iâm finding as many ways as I can to make certain scenes redundant by deepening and doubling others. To me, this is an interesting process because it has the effect of thematically intensifying the whole, but it can lead to dramatic surprises. Certain scenes I thought would be crucial to the coherence of the whole ended up cut, while other scenes, which were somewhat cursory in the book, ended up being pivotal in the script. I know Iâm being vague, but thereâs not a lot I can tell you at this point about the specifics, since weâre still very much in development on it. Iâll just say for now that weâre really swinging for the fences--shocktillyoudrop.com
