Entertainment Weekly reports that Oscar nominee and Golden Globe winner John Lithgow (The Crown, Trial & Error) has joined the remake of Stephen King’s Pet Sematary as Jud Crandall. The role was previously played by the late Fred Gwynne in the 1989 adaptation of the book.
Jud is the older, country neighbor who befriends Louis Creed (played by the previously-announced Jason Clarke) and has lived in the area long enough to know its many secrets. He takes the young Creed family on a tour of the nearby woods that leads to a peculiar pet burial ground, aka, the “pet sematary.” After the family pet is killed by a speeding truck, Jud takes them to an even stranger place deep in the wilderness which leads to greater horrors as tragedy strikes the Creed family.
Paramount Pictures‘ adaptation will be directed by Dennis Widmyer and Kevin Kolsch (Starry Eyes) and is written by Jeff Buhler, the showrunner for Syfy’s upcoming horror science fiction series, Nightflyers, based on the George R.R. Martin novella. Lorenzo di Bonaventura (1408, Transformers) is producing along with Mark Vahradian and Steven Schneider (Insidious).
The film is an updated version of Stephen King’s Pet Sematary. The following is how the 1983 book is described: The road in front of Dr. Louis Creed’s rural Maine home frequently claims the lives of neighborhood pets. Louis has recently moved from Chicago to Ludlow with his wife Rachel, their children and pet cat. Near their house, local children have created a cemetery for the dogs and cats killed by the steady stream of transports on the busy highway. Deeper in the woods lies another graveyard, an ancient Indian burial ground whose sinister properties Louis discovers when the family cat is killed.
Pet Sematary is scheduled to begin shooting this summer and slated for release on April 19, 2019.
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