George Romero worked for several years on an adaptation of Stephen King's Pet Sematary, but the timing never worked out. Between post-production on Day of the Dead and the development of Monkey Shines, Romero's schedule conflicted with the various windows of funding/production that opened up. It was, for him as for King, a very personal project that spoke to family and fatherhood in ways that were incredibly meaningful to him. Working from King's screenplay, the project came close enough to production with Romero at the helm that Romero storyboarded the project. 

King and Romero had sought to work together several times over the course of their careers, with Creepshow and The Dark Half being the only completed films. But Romero worked towards filming not just Pet Sematary but The Stand, It, Children of the Corn, and The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon. The archive also contains a 1983 screenplay by King called The Shotgunners, which King would rework in the 1990s for his novel The Regulator.