As the Stephen King take over continues with New Line Cinema’s IT next week,  the iconic horror author has quietly taken action to take back the rights to several of his high profile works.

One of the biggest stories of the year hit a few weeks back over at Zerner Law, who discovered that King recently filed notices that he intends to terminate the transfer of his licenses for the movies, The Dead Zone, Cujo, Creepshow, Children of the Corn, Cat’s Eye, and Firestarter.

The termination notices were mailed on August 31, 2016, and will be effective as of September 1, 2018. One year from this coming Friday King will be celebrating, probably with fava beans and a nice chianti.

In layman’s terms, King will have regained full rights to his stories The Dead Zone, Cujo, Creepshow, Children of the Corn, Cat’s Eye, and Firestarter next September. While the current rights holders will still be able to distribute their previously produced works, they will no longer be allowed to make new works, including sequels or remakes of the aforementioned titles:

“In other words, after September 1, 2018, if a studio wanted to make a sequel or remake of any of these movies, they would have to go back to Stephen King and make a new deal, explains the site.”

Here’s the complicated part: the termination only affects U.S. rights.  If a studio wanted to make a sequel to Dead Zone, for example, but only wanted to release it outside the U.S., it could, in theory, do that.

This sounds incredibly similar to what’s been going on with the Friday the 13th rights, which means there have got to be hundreds of terminations coming in the wake of this law. The consequences could be catastrophic to studios but it could lead to some fresh and exciting deals, especially when the rights are taken away from a studio who has done nothing but abuse them.

Speaking of, the timing of this story is hilarious as earlier this week we told you that Children of the Corn Producer Donald Borchers filed a federal copyright suit, alleging that he and not The Weinstein Company owns the sequel rights to the franchise. While I’m no legal expert, it looks like he’s wasting his time with this one…

In regards to the other works, here are some that have been in the pipeline that better start filming within the next 354 days.

Akiva Goldsman is set to remake King‘s Firestarter for Universal Pictures. Goldsman will be co-writing the screenplay with Scott Teems (Rectify). Released in 1984, Mark L. Lester directed the first adaptation about a couple who participated in a potent medical experiment who gain telekinetic ability and then have a child, played by Drew Barrymore, who is pyrokinetic. A miniseries follow-up to the film, entitled “Rekindled”, was released in 2002 on the Sci-Fi Channel.

Sunn Classic Pictures, veteran producer/director Mr. Lang Elliott, in 2015 announced plans to produce, distribute and reboot films from its library. One of the most popular properties in the library is the film based on the Stephen King book entitled “Cujo” that starred Dee Wallace Stone in Sunn’s 1983 motion picture version. The reboot is currently titled C.U.J.O., and stands for “Canine Unit Joint Operations”.  The screenplay has been completed and development is underway with Lang Elliott set to direct. DJ Perry was set to star.  Lewis Teague directed the 1983 adaptation in which a friendly St. Bernard named “Cujo” contracts rabies and conducts a reign of terror on a small American town. It sounds as if the remake will integrate military into the story?