Turning Up the Heat

No one will actually say that the set of the new Sci Fi Channel movie “Firestarter: Rekindled” was cursed. But the star and executive producer admit a lot of strange and unexplained things happened during production in Salt Lake City on the sequel to the Stephen King horror classic.

“Everything that could possible go wrong went wrong on this movie,” says executive producer Tom Thayer. “A bizarre set of circumstances during production forced us to bring in somebody at one point to ‘cleanse’ the set. You are used to things going wrong during a production, but these were strange, off the wall.”

The first day on the set, says star Marguerite Moreau, her mother suffered a brain aneurysm and nearly died. “She is fine now,” says Moreau. “But that is how we started. The next day, part of the crew who were busy exploding things almost died. The fire would start at certain times, and then it wouldn’t. We had problems with sets and crews--whole crews leaving and designers leaving.”

The local psychic, says Moreau, not only “cleansed” the set but also gave it her blessing. So did the psychic’s visit stop the mayhem?

“It depends on who you talk to,” says Thayer. “I kept saying during production ... they are going to capture Osama bin Laden the night this picture is going to air!”

“Firestarter: Rekindled,” which can be seen Sunday and Monday on the cable network, is set 10 years after the conclusion of King’s original story. Charlie McGee (Moreau) has spent her young life on the run.

Both cursed and blessed with a pyrokinetic ability, Charlie is known as a “firestarter” and wanted by the government agency that created her--especially the psychotic scientist John Rainbird (Malcolm McDowell). Rainbird has become obsessed with her and is determined to gain control of her powers, having spent the last decade perfecting the drug that gave Charlie her abilities. During those years, he has also cultivated a dangerous array of young boys, each with a different psychic ability.

Danny Nucci plays a researcher who unwittingly leads Rainbird to Charlie, while Dennis Hopper is a half-mad professor named Richardson who was one of Rainbird’s first test subjects.

McDowell (“A Clockwork Orange,” “If”) welcomed playing such a complex character. “He is not just a sociopath,” he says. “I found it very interesting, this sort of ‘Beauty and the Beast’ kind of thing--the fact that he created her and was in love with her. It gave me a place to go.”

Originally, there wasn’t a scene between Rainbird and Richardson, but when Hopper was cast, writer Philip Eisner quickly wrote a sequence in which Rainbird tortures him. “That was one of the great days for me to work on that project,” says McDowell.

“I have known [Hopper] since ‘69, when I first met him,” McDowell says. “He was doing ‘Easy Rider’ and I was doing ‘If.’ We were both at the Cannes Film Festival together.... I hung out with him and Jack [Nicholson] and Peter Fonda.”

King, says Thayer, has no involvement in the movie. Universal Studios owned the rights to the book, having turned it into a popular movie in 1984, starring Drew Barrymore as Charlie. But Thayer says they have kept King’s agents in the loop since the project was ordered.

“I have been trying to sell this movie off and on for about four or five years, in one incarnation or another,” says Thayer. “I kept saying to people, ‘You can’t ignore the title. You can’t ignore the concept. You can’t ignore the author.’”

If the movie is a success, Thayer and Sci Fi will transform “Firestarter” into a weekly series. “There is a lot to examine [in a weekly series],” he says. “There are certainly elements of ‘The Fugitive,’ and you have elements of ‘The Incredible Hulk.’ She has really become addicted to aspects of her alter ego. It’s like a drug to her. She detests what it does to her, but once it’s turned on, she craves it. She is loath to turn it off. To me, that’s very interesting.”

“Firestarter: Rekindled” can be seen Sunday and Monday at 9 p.m. on the Sci Fi Channel. The network has rated it TV-14-VS (may be unsuitable for children under 14, with special advisories for violence and sexuality).