Andy Muschietti’s It punched us all in the gut this past September. Honestly, when reading for the first time that Stephen King’s It was being remade into a feature film, who actually thought that it would be good?
For one, horror remakes tend to be fairly awful (we’re looking at you A Nightmare on Elm Street). Secondly, Stephen King adaptations have always been hit, or miss; see this years The Dark Tower for a great example of a Stephen King adaptation gone disappointingly wrong. Of course, then we started getting more information about IT through promo’s, interviews, and word-of-mouth seemed good, and well… we know the rest.
It absolutely ‘killed’ it at the box-office this year, and Stephen King has a few ideas for what made the film so successful. Chatting with EW, the writer shared his thoughts:
“I think one of the things that really happened was that 1990 miniseries. A whole generation of kids between the ages of 8 and 14 were scared shitless by Tim Curry and when the new one came out it was a chance to revisit that particular experience in their childhood. Then there was this weird viral bulge in stories about creepy clowns. That was in the press all over the place. So it was a number of different things. It was the right movie at the right time.”
SEE ALSO: Georgie escapes Pennywise in funny alternate opening to It
Clowns have always been creepy, but he’s right: Clowns were in the media more than ever in 2016. It felt like a campfire tale come to life, and there was no better time for a film about a homicidal clown to release in theaters. Of course, we haven’t seen the last of Pennywise. It: Chapter Two has been announced, and will continue the story of The Losers Club.
When children begin to disappear in the town of Derry, Maine, a group of young kids are faced with their biggest fears when they square off against an evil clown named Pennywise, whose history of murder and violence dates back for centuries.
It sees Andy Muschietti directing Bill Skarsgard (Hemlock Grove) as Pennywise alongside Jaeden Lieberher (St. Vincent), Finn Wolfhard (Stranger Things), Jack Dylan Grazer (Tales of Halloween), Wyatt Oleff (Guardians of the Galaxy), Chosen Jacobs (Cops and Robbers), Jeremy Ray Taylor (Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip), Owen Teague (Bloodline), Sophia Lillis (A Midsummer Night’s Dream) and Nicholas Hamilton (Captain Fantastic).
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Originally published December 30, 2017. Updated December 19, 2019.
