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Every new novel by hailed horror/thriller writer Stephen King is guaranteed to hit the best-seller lists. The Dead Zone was no exception. After it was published in 1979, Lorimar Productions snapped up the film rights, singed a well-known director to helm the project and assigned scriptwriter Jeffrey Boam to translate the novel for the screen. Simultaneously, the project was offered to David Cronenberg. However, it was a slight case of non-communication within Lorimar. And a slight case of hair-being-torn-out by the apologetic lady in the development office who had not been advised that a director had already been signed. Cronenberg moved on to write and direct Videodrome; Lorimar shelved the shoot and Dino De Laurentiis subsequently picked up the option for The Dead Zone in November of 1981. De Laurentiis offered Debra Hill, at that time producing Halloween II for him, the task of developing The Dead Zone as a motion picture. And in the spring of 1982, Hill and De Laurentiis moved full steam ahead, signing David Cronenberg -- after all! -- to direct. Cronenberg and King, both masters in their fields, were delighted with this turn of events, as each is an admirer of the other. Next it was a matter of deciding which script to shoot from three different versions. The parallel stories which converge in the book posed a complicated problem in transferring the novel to the screen. Once it was decided that Jeffrey Boam had the best grip on the story, the problem eventually became resolved.
By then, associate producer Jeffrey Chernov had scouted locations in the northeastern United States and eastern Canada, looking for the perfect New Hampshire town. He covered the logical areas such as Maine, Vermont, Massachusetts and New Hampshire in the U.S. Not satisfied, he searched in Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and ultimately found Niagara-on-the-Lake in Ontario. This historically-restored small Canadian town on the shores of Lake Ontario a few miles north of the New York state border had all the ready-made elements of a New England town which best conveyed the film's mood, described by Cronenberg as "Norman Rockwell American Gothic." The prestigious Shaw Festival, incidentally, is also located in Niagara-on-the-Lake Thus it was decided to shoot ten weeks of principal photography in Canada, establishing a base in Toronto, Cronenberg's home town. Casting (taken from Paramount's 'Handbook of Production Information') "Dino De Laurentiis is a creative producer, which means he was very involved in the casting," said Cronenberg, who added, "It was a collaborative effort with suggestions and rejections from both sides.
The
stellar cast of The Dead Zone, which kept both the director an Tom Skerritt plays a sheriff who believes Smith's powers will help solve a murder. Upcoming young Canadian actor Nicholas Campbell plays a suspect deputy, and Colleen Dewhurst is his protective mother. Canadian actor Sean Sullivan plays Smith's long-suffering father and Jackie Burroughs his distraught and religious mother. Anthony Zerbe is a friend who teaches Smith the real world of politics. Herbert Lom joined the cast to play the sympathetic doctor who sees Smith through his coma and who has his own insights into Smith's psychic powers. (on to page 3)
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Throughout the summer of 1982, the triumvirate of De Laurentiis,
Cronenberg and Hill worked with Jeffrey Boam as often as they could
get together in the New York/Toronto/Los Angeles triangle. In
preference to a re-write, they completely started the script from
scratch. Rather than running the parallel stories, they decided to
tell the tale from Johnny Smith's (Christopher Walken) point of view
and weave the other two characters' stories into it, which proved
successful. Their version of the screenplay of 
d
producers equally happy, is headlined by Academy Award-winning
Christopher Walken who plays Johnny Smith, a man who emerges from a
five year coma possessed with a clairvoyant power to see visions of
the past, present, and, more frightening, the future. Brooke Adams
plays his girlfriend, and later a political organizer for Greg Stilson, played by Martin Sheen, a maverick politician who gives
Johnny Smith cause to question the morality of his special powers.
