Stephen King’s work is the stuff of nightmares. He’s created some of the most iconic characters of horror. However, it’s possible that no character has quite grabbed hold of our psyche like Pennywise the clown, the personification of the demon from King’s seminal tale It. While the cinematic adaptation of the story has been taking its sweet time coming to the screen, it now appears that when the film finally does come crawling out of the shower drain, it will do so with the intention of scaring the hell out of you.
Producer Roy Lee has confirmed in an interview with Collider that the script they have is for an R-rated version of the story. This means that the movie won’t have to pull any punches when it comes to showing any violent, or simply terrifying, imagery. The book’s lone adaptation to date was a 1990 TV miniseries which, while it did a remarkable job scaring the hell out of a generation, it obviously had to work within the restrictions of television. The new movie, or movies, will not have this problem. A scene like the one below, for instance, would probably have a lot more gore.
While It will be able to show pretty much whatever they want on screen, it’s the way the movie may choose to do this that may be unique. Stephen King’s original novel follows seven friends as they face off against a monster during two different periods in their lives, once as children, and then again as adults. The novel jumps back and forth between the two time periods. However, it looks like this version will film each part of the story as a separate movie. While this is hardly surprising, given Hollywood’s penchant for stretching out franchises as long as possible, it turns out that even though they may be shooting two movies, we could still only see one.
It is very close to the source material in one way but very different if you look at it as a literary piece of work… We’re taking it and making the movie from the point of view of the kids, and then making another movie from the point of view of the adults, that could potentially then be cut together like the novel. But it’s gonna be a really fun way of making this movie.
We have to agree that the idea of filming two movies, and possibly only producing one, is a unique way to do it. If nothing else it would give the studio the option of releasing whichever version is actually better. It is slightly upsetting, however, as the fact that the studio only wanted to make one film was reportedly the reason that True Detectives’ Cary Fukunaga left the project.
Does an R-rated It give you hope that the film version knows what they’re doing? Can there ever be a better Pennywise than Tim Curry? Let us know what you think.
