There have been many ups and downs in the saga of It. The film adaptation of Stephen King’s landmark novel has been struggling to get to the big screen for what seems like a lifetime. Well, we may not have to wait much longer. We reported that It would start shooting this fall, but it looks like it’ll be even sooner than that.The creator of Pennywise the Dancing Clown took to Twitter to offer the vaguest of updates on the film’s production.
THE DARK TOWER movie is filming; IT begins soon. Pretty cool.
— Stephen King (@StephenKing) April 13, 2016
According to the magazine 24 Hour Toronto, It will start shooting in the city this July. It is happening.
There’s a lot of mixed feelings about this news. Personally, I was profoundly excited when True Detective director Cary Fukunaga was attached to the project, but it was well known that the script was going to advance the timeline of events from the book. When Fukunaga left, director Andy Muschietti (Mama) stepped in. We don’t know what kind of changes might have been made to the script when Muschietti took over, or if Fukunaga’s choice for Pennywise, Will Poulter, was still attached. There’s just a lot we don’t know about the movie at this point, and that’s making fans like myself anxious.
It has the potential to be the kind of mainstream horror that should experience a revival. It is being filmed in two parts like Avengers: Infinity War and Justice League, taking a chance that some horror fantasy can swing with the big dogs. New Line Cinema has made a commitment to reinvigorating a wider horror audience; they’ve succeeded at this in the past with the event film marketing of Freddy vs. Jason. It’s very likely they’ll take this approach with It.
However, part of Muschietti’s addition to the project is likely helping to lower the film’s budget. That’s not a definite indicator of the film’s eventual quality, but it does raise some valid concerns. For a film like It, that probably involves scaling back on creature effects in one way or another, and It needs to have some fantastic creatures. Pennywise is a shapeshifter that turns into his victims’ terrified imaginings, and those will be what people will be talking about either positively or not.
Even with all this trepidation, I’m still excited to see the big screen version. It is one of my top five favorite books of all time, and I’m committed to experiencing any incarnation of the story I can. In the mean time, maybe I’ll rewatch It and some other Stephen King miniseries.
