Pet Sematary: Bloodlines Director Clarifies Prequel’s Connections To 2019 Stephen King Adaptation

Despite being billed as a prequel to the 2019 Stephen King adaptation, co-writer/director Lindsey Anderson Beer clarified Pet Sematary: Bloodlines‘ connection to the larger franchise. The Paramount+ movie centers on a young Jud Crandall as his efforts to leave his hometown of Ludlow are upended when a childhood friend is brought back to life by the eponymous location. Pet Sematary: Bloodlines‘ ensemble cast is led by Jackson White as a young Jud alongside Forrest Goodluck, Jack Mulhern, Henry Thomas, Natalie Alyn Lind, Isabella Star LaBlanc, Samantha Mathis, Pam Grier and David Duchovny.

Ahead of the movie’s release, Screen Rant spoke exclusively with Beer to break down Pet Sematary: Bloodlines. When asked about her goals in adapting the multiple tones of King’s novel, the co-writer/director clarified the prequel’s connections to the 2019 movie, indicating that while it may have started as a direct follow-up to it and features some of the same creative team members, she approached it more as a prequel to the original novel than any other adaptation. See what Beer explained below:

You know, I think this project started as a 2019 prequel, Jeff Buhler wrote the original draft, and obviously, it’s the producers of the 2019 film. When I came aboard, I really didn’t think of it as a prequel to any one film, I just thought of as this prequel to the book, and just kept re-reading the book. I wanted to honor the book as much as I could, both in terms of the themes and the tone of the original book. Obviously, the theme being, “What would you do to spend one more day with somebody you love, and what would you do to protect the people you love?” We’ve seen that in the movies play out in terms of Louis’s character, and his child, and I wanted to expand that. You see that with Bill Baterman, and his son Timmy in this version, but you also see a version of it with Dan Crandall, and his son Jud, and lying to his son and trying to push him out of town to protect him. You see it in Jud and Manny’s relationship, and coming together to try to put their friend out of misery and save each other. You see it in Marjorie, Pam Grier’s character, and everybody trying to protect their community, and I really wanted to take that theme and expand it to the people in Ludlow, and really show the burden that this kind of cursed town has on all of its inhabitants and has for generations. The other important thing to me was really preserving the tone of the book, which is it’s a character drama first, but all the scarier because it is a character drama first. You really care what happens to those people, and the book, I don’t think people know, like a lot of people don’t remember or haven’t read the book, they’re more familiar with the movies, but it has this absurdist inner monologue of Lewis’s that runs through that lends some dark comedy and levity at times. I love the mishmash of genres in the book, and I wanted to make sure to honor that in my version of the film to where it is dark, and it’s scary, but there are some moments of levity and some bonding between friends, which also to me matched up very well with what I was trying to do, which is kind of mimic the pace of war in this movie. This is Jud’s war, he wants to go to war at the beginning of the film, and ultimately he’s going to stay and fight a war in Ludlow. When I was thinking about the pace of war, it’s not all action, some of it is lulls, and some of it is tense stalking, and some of it’s frenetic action, and some of it is just bonding with the people that you’re fighting by side-by-side with. That’s something that I kept in mind whenever trying to pace the film.

Pet Sematary: Bloodlines Flips A Recent King Adaptation

In the 40-plus years of studios trying their hands at King adaptations, many of his works have seen follow-ups produced thanks to their originals being financially successful. Some of the more infamous have been the long-running Children of the Corn franchise, which has yet to see a positively reviewed adaptation, as well as even Pet Sematary itself, whose 1992 sequel was a critical failure and a commercial disappointment.

With Pet Sematary: Bloodlines acting as a prequel to its source novel, it actually serves as a flipping of the recent well-received King adaptation, Doctor Sleep. Acting as a translation of both King’s 2013 novel and sequel to Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining movie, Mike Flanagan’s project followed an adult Danny Torrance as he grappled with the demons of his past in order to help a young girl with Shining abilities take down the vampire-like cult known as the True Knot.

Unlike Doctor Sleep, Pet Sematary: Bloodlines isn’t technically based on an actual King novel, instead adapting a brief section in the 1983 book in which Jud warns Louis Creed about the malevolent powers of the eponymous graveyard. While Beer indicates that her approach to the movie was more focused on its source novel than prior adaptations, trailers for the movie have shown glimpses of connections to the 2019 Pet Sematary, namely a flash of the revived cat Church. With Beer having also indicated her desire to continue telling stories within this particular King universe, it would be interesting to see if John Lithgow even makes an audio cameo reprising his role of Jud to tie the projects together.