In surprising news, Netflix’s recently announced take on Stephen King’s killer dog story Cujo looks to have attracted Darren Aronofsky.
Well, it’s good to know that film news still has the capacity to surprise us. According to a report at The InSneider, Darren Aronofsky is said to be in line to direct the freshly announced Cujo remake at Netflix. The director of films such as Black Swan and Requiem For A Dream is a master at depicting psychological torment, and the tale of a rabid killer dog attacking a woman and her young son as they’re trapped in a car certainly has the kind of narrative set-up that will allow Aronofsky to deploy tricks of his trade.
After all, this is the filmmaker that gave us the delightfully bonkers mother!, which put Jennifer Lawrence through some of the strangest psychological horror we can remember seeing in some time. With that kind of imagination at his disposal, Aronofsky could be able to take the cramped confines of Cujo's setting and still deliver something characteristically outre.
Perhaps it was the decision to work with Netflix that was more surprising at first, but again, when you think about it, Aronofsky has always been the kind of director to seek out new modes of exhibition. He shot his debut film, Pi on high contrast black and white reversal film, while in 2023 he released Postcards From Earth, a film designed only to play in 18K at Las Vegas’ groundbreaking exhibition venue, The Sphere. When your modes of exhibition encompasses that wide a spectrum, why not hop in for a turn on the Netflix experience and try something else?
Next up, Aronofsky has Caught Stealing on the way, the Austin Butler-starring drama set in 1990s New York City and set for release this autumn. Zoe Kravitz also stars. Beyond that, the filmmaker has been linked once again to a Plastic Man movie for DC Studios. Whether Cujo will supersede that project remains to be seen.
Should this story prove to be accurate, Aronofsky will join a list of talented filmmakers who have been working with Stephen King’s material of late. It’s just the latest in a never-ending wave of adaptations of the author’s work, which began in 1976 with Brian De Palma’s Carrie.
Osgood Perkins’ take on The Monkey is still in cinemas, while 2025 will also bring us Mike Flanagan’s The Life Of Chuck and Edgar Wright’s The Running Man. On the small screen, there’s also HBO’s Welcome To Derry and MGM’s The Institute debuting this year too.
We’ll bring you more on Cujo as we hear it.
