Bryan Fuller is pump­ing the gas on a remake of Stephen King’s Christine

In Hol­ly­wood, the works of Stephen King may be the industry’s most pre­cious renew­able resource. His expan­sive bib­li­og­ra­phy of nov­els, novel­las, and short sto­ries form a deep well that writ­ers and direc­tors still draw on with reg­u­lar fre­quen­cy, with the Apple minis­eries Lisey’s Sto­ry cur­rent­ly mak­ing waves as the lat­est King adap­ta­tion debut­ing to pop­u­lar suc­cess, and anoth­er one soon on the way.

This morn­ing, Dead­line ran an exclu­sive that TV showrun­ner extra­or­di­naire Bryan Fuller will get his feet wet in the world of movies with a take on of Chris­tine, King’s infa­mous book about a sen­tient car fueled both by diesel and an unquench­able thirst for blood. He’s writ­ing the script with an eye to direct the film, which will direct­ly adapt the nov­el instead of remak­ing the beloved 1983 film from John Carpenter.

Vin­cen­zo Natali (who direct­ed a hand­ful of Han­ni­bal episodes for Fuller, in addi­tion to a fea­ture adap­ta­tion of the King novel­la In the Tall Grass) and Jason Blum will both act as pro­duc­ers on the film, his Blum­house label plac­ing their stamp on the pro­duc­tion along with Sony. This would join a dock­et of pend­ing King projects that also includes a film ver­sion of The Dark Half from Alex Ross Per­ry.

In the nov­el, Chris­tine is the name of a 1957 Ply­mouth Fury that comes into the own­er­ship of one Arnie Cun­ning­ham, a chron­i­cal­ly uncool teen who fix­es up the vehi­cle in the hopes that the hot rod will improve his rep­u­ta­tion. Lit­tle does he know, the demon­i­cal­ly pos­sessed auto­mo­bile gives him a full makeover, tak­ing over his body and warp­ing his per­son­al­i­ty as the body count con­tin­ues to rise.

For Fuller’s first for­ay into movie direct­ing, he’s tak­en on an unen­vi­able task in dis­tin­guish­ing his work from the already-exis­tent clas­sic of the hor­ror genre. The 2011 pre­quel to Car­pen­ter-King joint The Thing painful­ly proved just how dif­fi­cult fol­low­ing up that act can be, so Fuller’s work is cut out for him.