Famously finicky author Stephen King has given the big-screen adaptation of his best-seller “Cell” his blessing.

Director Tim Roth told SciFi Wire recently that he’d met with King and received the author’s endorsement for the project.

“My first question when I adapted it was can I deviate from the book?” Roth said. “It’s Stephen King. Am I going to piss off Stephen King? He was mad at Stanley Kubrick, I don’t want him mad at me. And, finally, Stephen King was like, ‘Do whatever you want.'”

Roth, with writers Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, is currently working on a screen-adaptation of the King novel. Roth admitted he will keep some parts of Kings novel, but there are other he will drop for the film adaptation to better suit the silver-screen.

“Cell” is an apocolyptic story with most of the world’s population turned to mindless zombies after a signal from their cell phones. Roth said he liked the first 40 or so pages of the novel, when the world was in chaos after the population had been zombie-fied. However, he felt the book lacked dramatic intensity in the last half, after the zombies stop trying to kill everyone.

“I love the opening” said Roth. “But I also want to keep, … not necessarily that same chaotic tone, but I want to keep the tension of the opening 40 pages of the book going throughout the whole film and introduce other elements. Because I think the book, for me, where it looses tension is where suddenly you don’t feel like the phone crazies are trying to kill them. I find that it’s finding other ways to make it so you still feel the tension that any second you could get killed [and] carrying that throughout the whole film.”

Roth hopes to film “Cell” in Boston, where the novel is set. He also hopes to pursuade King to make one of his trademark cameos in the film adapatation.

In the past, a cameo by King in the film has been an endorsement by the popular author that he likes and supports the big-screen adapation of his work.