According to The Hollywood Reporter, we can expect not one but two films based on Stephen King’s epic doorstop of a book, IT. Warner Bros. has chosen Cary Fukunaga to direct, and he and screenwriter Chase Palmer are splitting the story into a two-part film. No release date or casting details… yet.
I like the two-part approach, since It really tells two tales that encompass the same characters and themes, but divide them with 27 years. In both parts of the story, a central cast of characters (the “Losers Club”) faces a nameless monster that incapacitates its victims by appearing as the victim’s worst fear. The novel alternates between the two time periods, but for the sake of keeping the storylines straight, I hope the first part of the film focuses on the 1950’s Losers Club and the second with their grown-up counterparts.
It is one of the first “grown-up” books I read. I couldn’t have been older than eight or nine, and I know I didn’t understand most of what was happening in the book, but reading about Bill Denbrough‘s encounter with “It’s” werewolf disguise is one of my most vivid childhood memories. I must have re-read those pages a dozen times, hoping each time that somehow the story would change and werewolf-It would be just a little faster, and snatch Stuttering Bill off his bike. And I liked Bill! I’m glad they kept the werewolf in the 1990 made-for-TV version, even if they did completely re-write the scene. I hope Fukunaga and Palmer keep the original scene in the new films.
The real question, though, is this: will they ask Tim Curry to make a cameo appearance? Curry’s turn as the monster’s “Pennywise the Dancing Clown” persona in the 1990 adaptation is the stuff of legends!
