Killer dog tale Cujo, by Stephen King, is getting a new telling, backed by Netflix money. More on the story here.
There’s an old maxim that suggests that there’s always at least three Robin Hood films in development at the same time. Given the never-ending glut of Stephen King adaptations that are pumped out, it would probably be more accurate these days to replace Sherwood Forest’s rogueish outlaw with the prolific novelist who always seems to have a take on his work in cinemas, or just around the corner.
Case in point: while Osgood Perkins’ take on The Monkey is still in cinemas, 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.
Naturally, there are more King adaptations in the pipeline, too, perhaps most notably next year’s take on The Long Walk, a King novella set in a dystopian future that hasn’t previously been adapted for the screen. It’s being helmed by Francis Lawrence, the director of (among other things) I Am Legend and The Hunger Games: The Ballad Of Songbirds & Snakes.
Read more: The Monkey review | Osgood Perkins’ Longlegs follow-up is completely bananas
One of Stephen King’s novels that has been adapted before is Cujo, the author’s tale of a rabid killer dog attacking a woman and her young son. The book was written at the height of King’s well-documented addiction issues, and like other stories of his penned during that period, the spectre of his demons is an ever-present threat throughout his work.
The original Cujo adaptation came out in 1983, directed by Lewis Teague and with Dee Wallace playing the lead. It wasn’t the most highly-regarded of King’s adaptations – unlike, say, Brian De Palma’s take on Carrie, Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining or David Cronenberg’s The Dead Zone – but it still made three times its original budget back in cinemas.
We don’t know a great deal about Netflix’s new take on the material (reported on by The Hollywood Reporter), which sees Cujo, ‘a friendly St. Bernard, contract rabies and conducts a reign of terror on a small American town.’
When we do hear more details though, we’ll be sure to let you know.
