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Film Adaptation Of Stephen King’s ‘Cell’ To Premiere At Frightfest 2016

Published on: January 12, 2016 at 8:13 AM
By Anne Sewell

The much-anticipated movie adaptation of Stephen King’s zombie horror novel Cell will finally have its world premiere at the Film4 Frightfest in Glasgow, Scotland, running from February 17-28.

According to Den of Geek , it’s taken nine whole years to get to this point, but it is finally happening, rather appropriately in an era where zombie films and zombie apocalypse TV series dominate the entertainment sphere. While King has included zombie-like characters in some of his novels, he never went full-out zombie until he published the popular novel Cell .

The writer of that article theorizes that finally Stephen King peered into an alternate reality and saw that cell phones were going to take control over our lives and, especially with the prevalence for people staring transfixed at their iPhones right now, maybe he’s not that far wrong.

In the novel, a mysterious event, dubbed the “Pulse,” sends a signal through the global network which turns all cell phone users into crazed killer zombies. While at first the zombies attack everyone in a manic frenzy, they finally group together with a kind of hyper-intelligent hive mind, helping each other scavenge for food and recruit more zombies in the now apocalyptic world. They even reportedly develop psychic powers which they can use to make humans commit suicide while the Pulse continues to constantly broadcast.

Published in 2006, the book has taken nine years to get to the point of premiering on the big screen and King’s unique take on the zombie apocalypse will be available for all to see.

Stephen King's "Cell"
[Image via Wikimedia Commons / Fair Use ]

The film is directed by Tod “Kip” Williams ( Paranormal Activity 2 ) from a script written by Adam Alleca ( The Last House on the Left) and the master of horror, Stephen King himself.

While it was originally slated for release in 2009, reportedly a series of creative differences and the inability to produce a suitable script slowed things down. Finally, however, the movie version of Cell started coming together, thanks to a new script by Stephen King, who reportedly said he would be changing the original ending of the novel for the movie.

In 2012, the film was declared to be happening, with John Cusack playing the lead role. Other stars include Samuel L. Jackson, Stacy Keach, and Isabella Fuhrman, along with a whole horde of zombie extras, of course.

Now we are set to see whether popular novelist Stephen King’s cell phone apocalypse can keep up with the zombie shows that are prevalent on TV today, including AMC’s The Walking Dead , Z Nation , and iZombie , along with feature films like Brad Pitt’s World War Z and others.

Finally, as Fangoria reports, the completed Cell movie is set to achieve its world premiere at Film4 Frightfest as part of Scotland’s Glasgow Film Festival, running from February 17 to 28.

The ultimately terrifying Glasgow portion of Frightfest will also reportedly feature several other premieres, including Jason Zada’s The Forest , Sean Byrne’s The Devil’s Candy , Sonny Mallhi’s Anguish , Joe Begos’ The Mind’s Eye , Jesse Thomas Cook’s The Hexecutioners , Can Evrenol’s Baskin , a multi-director anthology Southbound , and the Goetz Brothers’ remake of Martyrs .

To add to the chills and shivers, Frightfest will also feature the European premieres of Tyler MacIntyre’s Patchwork and Johannes Roberts’ The Other Side of the Door , as well as the Scottish premieres of Roar Uthaug’s The Wave and Sol Cheang’s SPL 2: A Time for Consequences , along with a sneak preview of Paul Hyett’s Heretiks and several scary short films.

For Stephen King fans in the U.S., there is no news available as yet of a date for the U.S. premiere of Cell . Regrettably, there is also no worthwhile trailer available on YouTube at the time of writing.

[Image cropped and resized via Wikimedia Commons / Fair Use ]

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