EXCLUSIVE: Pet Sematary, Stephen King’s self-proclaimed scariest property ever, next installment in the franchise has gained momentum as it looks like it has found its director. Sources tell Deadline, Lindsey Beer has signed on to direct Paramount Players’ follow-up adaptation of the successful 2019 horror pic based on Stephen King’s best-seller. Beer has become one of busiest screenwriters and this will mark her directing debut. The classic 1989 adaptation made history with Mary Lambert directing the pic and its 1992 follow-up and it was important to studio execs to go back to the films roots and have a female filmmaker at the helm. Beer has wanted to jump into the directing the chair and saw this as a perfect opportunity. Beer also wrote the latest script based off a draft by Jeff Buhler.
Plot details are unknown at this time. The original story, which the 1989 and 2019 pic was also loosely based on, with their own different twists, followed a family, who after tragedy strikes, a grieving father discovers an ancient burial ground behind his home with the power to raise the dead.
The film will debut exclusively on Paramount+. Lorenzo di Bonaventura and Mark Vahradian will produce.
Beer has become one of the more sought after female screenwriters in town penning such big-budget pics as Chaos Walking and Transformers: The Last Night. She is also a writer and EP of the Netflix hit Sieraa Burgess is A Loser. She is also penning the upcoming live-action Bambi adaptation, and writers room for Godzilla Vs. Kong. She is repped by ICM Partners.