Pet Sematary Remake Begins Filming

Put your fluffy cats on a leash and keep an extra eye on your kids, we're heading back to Pet Sematary. 

Filming on Paramount Pictures' Pet Sematary remake has officially begun. Co-director Dennis Widmyer (Holidays, Starry Eyes) made the announcement on Twitter, sharing to his followers a snap of himself and his longtime collaborator and fellow Pet Sematary director Kevin Kolsch holding up a slate for the flick. Widmyer captioned the photo, which sees the two filmmakers shooting in what appears to be the titular cemetery, "Day one. #PetSematary." 

Toplined by Jason Clarke (Winchester, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes) as Dr. Louis Creed, Pet Sematary will recount the horrifying story first told in Stephen King's 1983 novel of the same name, which was adapted to film in 1989. (That one was directed by Mary Lambert, written by King, and starred Dale Midkiff as Dr. Louis Creed.) Like the source material, the remake movie will chronicle Dr. Creed's efforts to understand the mysteries of the isolated pet cemetery in the forest behind his family's new home in Ludlow, Maine — a curiosity sparked by the death of the family cat, Church, and intensified after the passing of their son Gage. 

John Lithgow joins Clarke as Jud Crandall, the elderly, friendly neighbor of Dr. Creed who takes the family on a tour through the cemetery and helps him cope with Church's death and subsequent resurrection.

Seeing Widmyer and Kolsch behind the cameras (or the slate, at the very least) for the Pet Sematary remake is enough to get fans hyped up about the pic, and for some, it might actually serve as a bit of reassurance that the project is in good hands. 

Ever since filmmaker Andy Muschietti translated what's considered King's most popular novel, the haunting split-in-two-timelines It, into a feature film released in 2017, everyone has had their eyes glued to other King projects that can be transformed from the written word to a motion picture — specifically with Muschietti at the helm.

Muschietti and his sister Barbara Muschietti, who produced It, were actually hoping to develop a remake of Pet Sematary not that long ago, and fans were seriously pumped about the prospect. "My affection for Pet Sematary will go on until I die. I will always dream about the possibility of making a movie," Muschietti told Entertainment Weekly in September of 2017. 

Another famous director, the Oscar-winning Guillermo del Toro, also put his name in the running for a Pet Sematary remake. The creative wrote on Twitter that the would "kill" to bring a modern version of the "unrelentingly dark and emotional" tale to the big screen. 

Hopefully now that Widmyer and Kolsch have kicked off production, the complaints of Muschietti and del Toro not directing the new Pet Sematary will die out. Let's just hope they don't pull a Gage and come back to life later on.

Pet Sematary is set for release on April 5, 2019 — two weeks earlier than originally planned.