Stephen King’s killer canine is coming back to life, with Deadline reporting this afternoon that Netflix and producer Roy Lee (IT) are developing a brand new Cujo movie.
The project “will go out to writers immediately,” Deadline notes in today’s report.
No other information has been announced at this time. Stay tuned for more.
Stephen King’s horror novel Cujo was originally published in 1981, with director Lewis Teague’s classic horror movie adaptation being unleashed just two years later in 1983. Dee Wallace, Ed Lauter, Daniel Hugh Kelly, and Danny Pintauro starred in the original adaptation of Cujo, wherein a friendly St. Bernard contracts rabies and embarks on a reign of terror.
Here’s the full synopsis for King’s novel: “Outside a peaceful town in central Maine, a monster is waiting. Cujo is a two-hundred-pound Saint Bernard, the best friend Brett Camber has ever had. One day, Cujo chases a rabbit into a cave inhabited by sick bats and emerges as something new altogether.
“Meanwhile, Vic and Donna Trenton, and their young son Tad, move to Maine. They are seeking peace and quiet, but life in this small town is not what it seems…
“As Tad tries to fend off the terror that comes to him at night from his bedroom closet, and as Vic and Donna face their own nightmare of a marriage on the rocks, there is no way they can know that a monster, infinitely sinister, waits in the daylight.”
It was announced ten years ago that Sunn Classic Pictures was behind a new Cujo adaptation titled C.U.J.O. (“Canine Unit Joint Operations”), but that project never got off the ground.
Stephen King recently returned to the world of Cujo for a short story sequel titled Rattlesnakes. The long-awaited follow-up tale debuted in last year’s King anthology You Like It Darker. Below you can listen to the making of the original Cujo with The Losers’ Club, who spoke to Dee Wallace at last year’s Creep I.E. Aftermath.
