Stephen King's Firestarter Remake Is Finally Fixing A Huge Casting Flaw
A new movie adaptation of Stephen King's Firestarter is on the way in 2022, one that fixes a regrettable casting error in past versions. Originally published by King in 1980, Firestarter isn't a superhero story, although in some ways it feels like a possible X-Men spinoff. At the center of the plot is Charlie McGee, a young girl who possesses pyrokinetic powers as a result of her parents both undergoing secret experiments prior to her birth. That might sound like an advantage on paper, but Charlie has trouble controlling her potentially deadly abilities.
Somewhere else in the multiverse, it seems possible that Charlie might have been introduced to Professor Charles Xavier and become a mutant hero. In today's media landscape dominated by comic book properties, it makes perfect sense that Universal has decided to resurrect Firestarter for the modern era as sort of a dark take on that genre. Relative newcomer Ryan Kiera Armstrong is set to play Charlie this time out, while Zac Efron portrays her father Andy, who possesses the ability to compel people to do things.
Related: How Firestarter Can Avoid Pet Sematary’s Stephen King Remake Mistakes
That casting has been met without much objection, but the casting of another important role is finally going to correct an injustice. The main villain of Firestarter is a sadistic Vietnam War veteran named John Rainbird, a man hired by nefarious organization The Shop to capture Charlie and her father. As could be surmised from his surname, Rainbird is a Native American, specifically of the Cherokee tribe, and that aspect of his identity is a large part of his character. In both the 1984 Firestarter movie and the 2002 Firestarter: Rekindled miniseries, Rainbird was mistakenly played by a
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