Director Lewis Teague’s Cujo is a superb film. It develops as a sluggish burn, giving the viewers time to get to know the relationships and conflicts within the Trenton household, after which it unleashes excessive terror as a mom and her youngster discover themselves trapped in a damaged down automotive throughout a warmth wave and beneath siege by a rabid St. Bernard. It is a basic Stephen King adaptation that I believe has aged extremely effectively – however right now there’s information {that a} remake is in improvement at Netflix, and the one large factor that excites me in regards to the challenge is the potential for it to correctly adapt the extraordinarily darkish ending from the novel.
Deadline has the news on the brand new streaming challenge, noting that the movie is being produced by Roy Lee, who has change into a significant participant in trendy Stephen King variations. His run with the writer’s materials started again in 2017 when he was a producer on IT, and he has since been a significant participant behind IT: Chapter Two, Physician Sleep, the miniseries remake of The Stand, final yr’s Salem’s Lot, and the upcoming film based mostly on The Lengthy Stroll. Per the commerce report, the search is now on for a Cujo screenwriter.
The aforementioned authentic model of Cujo, launched in 1983, is exceptionally trustworthy to the supply materials, however the largest deviation comes within the closing scenes: whereas the film ends with Donna Trenton (Dee Wallace) and her son Tad (Danny Pintauro) each surviving their encounter with the titular mad canine, Stephen King’s guide ends with younger Tad dying of heatstroke. This improvement was deemed too hardcore to incorporate within the first adaptation, but when a remake goes to occur, I really feel like it might finest be capable of stand other than its predecessor if it unleashes what may very well be the largest gut-punch ending since Frank Darabont’s The Mist.
Additionally price noting is that if the remake of Cujo have been to go along with the unique Stephen King ending it might open the door for an adaptation of the sequel novella that King revealed final yr in his assortment You Like It Darker. Titled “Rattlesnakes,” the story catches up with Vic Trenton – Donna’s husband and Tad’s father – a long time later and finds him trapped in a horrific haunting that forces him to mirror on the trauma of his son’s demise and the way it ended up altering his life.
Ought to it efficiently transfer by improvement, Cujo would be the fifth Stephen King adaptation out there completely to Netflix subscribers. The primary was Gerald’s Sport in 2017, and that unimaginable Mike Flanagan movie has been adopted by 1922, In The Tall Grass, and Mr. Harrigan’s Telephone. The streamer can be actively growing a sequence based mostly on the novel The Talisman with Steven Spielberg and Matt and Ross Duffer as producers.
This has been an enormous yr for Stephen King variations already, as Osgood Perkins’ The Monkey is now in theaters and we not too long ago obtained information a couple of film based mostly on “Danny Coughlin’s Dangerous Dream,” however issues are solely simply warming up in 2025. Following its award-winning premiere finally yr’s Toronto Worldwide Movie Competition, Mike Flanagan’s The Life Of Chuck is arriving in theaters this summer time, and Edgar Wright’s remake of The Operating Man is getting prepped for a November launch. On the small display, HBO shall be premiering the brand new prequel sequence IT: Welcome To Derry, and MGM+ shall be airing The Institute, based mostly on the novel of the identical identify.
Keep tuned right here on CinemaBlend for extra information in regards to the new adaptation of Cujo, as we’re at all times on prime of the most recent updates about upcoming Stephen King motion pictures and TV exhibits.