In the long history of Stephen King film adaptation there are only, I don't know, six entries that really stand alone as movies worth watching, and thanks to the mighty John Carpenter, Christine one of them. So if you were to remake the classic car-that-kills-people story, you'd want to find a current-day storyteller on that level, someone like, say, Bryan Fuller. Oh, hey! That exact thing is happening. Deadline reports Sony Pictures and Blumhouse are teaming with the Hannibal creator for a re-tooling of Christine, which Fuller will also write. Jason Blum, Vincenzo Natali, and Steven Hoban are strapped to the backseat as producers.
First published in 1983, Christine tells the story of a high school misfit named Arne, who finds a touch of confidence as he works on a broken-down 1958 Plymouth Fury. Unfortunately, the vehicle has a habit of murdering people and a fierce protectiveness of its owner. Carpenter adapted the novel to screen the same year it was published, leaning into the campiness of a homicidal car and creating an undersung horror classic.
According to the report, Fuller is looking to keep his version as a period piece set in the 1980s, with the studio no doubt thinking at least a little about the success of the IT films, not to mention Netflix's Stranger Things. Either way, Fuller is one heck of a choice; Christine will mark his feature-directorial debut, but as writer and executive producer on Hannibal, Fuller created one of the most beautifully violent horror stories of the last twenty years. Even the trippier moments of American Gods season 1—the only season of the show for which Fuller served as co-showrunner—lend themselves to the type of dreamlike, otherworldly weirdness Christine demands.