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John Lithgow joins Pet Semetary in an inspired bit of casting…

May 9th, 2018 by Irwin Fletcher Comments

Back on Halloween 1992, a 12-year-old Ciarán rented a copy of Pet Semetary from the local video shop – for those too young to know what that is ask your parents – and settled down to watch a movie based on a book his older sister wouldn’t let him read thinking ‘what’s so scary about a story about dead pets?’.

Thirty-five-ish minutes into the movie as Lewis Creed is haunted by the ghost of a student who died, Ciaran turned off the video as he was petrified and waited until the next morning before finishing the movie and then he watched it again and returned the video… and so began a long love of Stephen King books and movies.

King is enjoying another career resurgence with multiple adaptations of his works in the pipeline and the recent IT movie exceeding expectations and now the writing/directing duo of Dennis Widmyer and Kevin Kolsch are taking us back to Ludlow for a Pet Semetary remake, with Jason Clarke rumoured to be playing Louis Creed and according to EW the new Judson Crandall has been cast.

Originally played by Fred Gwynne, who was TV’s Herman Munster, in the 1988 movie, Crandall is Creed’s neighbour, friend and father figure who introduces Lewis to the Pet Semetary; in the new movie Crandall will be played by Hollywood Legend and all-round amazing actor, John Lithgow… who will no doubt nail Jud’s New England drawl.

King describes Crandall in the book as: “Louis Creed and his wife Rachel move their two children into a home and soon learn there is a creepy Pet Sematary near their property, where legend has it that animals buried there come back to life. It starts with their cat being run over, and brought back, and it gets much worse when the reanimation attempt turns to humans, who don’t come back exactly as they were before.”

Paramount has dated the new adaptation for release on April 19th, 2019.

I'm an LA journalist who really lives for his profession. I have also published work as Jane Doe in various mags and newspapers across the globe. I normally write articles that can cause trouble but now I write for FTN because Nerds are never angry, so I feel safe.