There really was no way for a film adaptation of IT to not be a massive undertaking. The Stephen King novel is some 1,100 pages long and it essentially tells two separate stories, with the same group of characters doing battle with a supernatural force twice, decades apart. With IT Chapter Two hitting theaters this weekend some might think this story is done, but oh no. Andy Muschietti has made it clear he wants to make a supercut of both films, and now it's starting to look like it could really happen.
This isn't just the director's pipe dream, Andy Muschietti says he's actually in talks with Warner Bros. about making the supercut happen complete with the new footage he wants to add...
No, we're in talks with the studio to make a supercut, which is basically the two movies edited together with all the material that is not in the released versions. And yeah, there are a couple of scenes that I want to shoot to make this a new experience.
While King's novel jumps back and forth between the two time periods, the two films break the timelines apart, with the first movie telling the story of the character's as kids, and the new movie following them as adults. Many have already been asking for a "supercut" down the road on DVD, something that combines the two films into one complete story, perhaps using the same time jumping structure of the novel.
Andy Muschietti isn't just willing to do such a thing, he wants it, and this is where his additional filming would come in. In addition to adding back in all of the deleted scenes for both IT movies for his massive "special edition," he tells ET that there are two additional scenes that he would want to include in it that were never filmed during either production.
Andy Muschietti doesn't specifically say what these scene would be, whether they would involve the younger actors, the adults, or both. At least one of them could be literally anything, because the director says only one of the scenes he has in mind actually comes from the novel...
One thing is from the novel and the other thing is not. I want to be a little cryptic about it.
The two chapters of IT in their theatrical version clock in at about five hours long, so calling something like this an "epic" might actually be an understatement. We could be looking at a six or seven hour film before too long. Having said that, it would be a monumental achievement in editing for something like this to go together and still work, and I would love to see the attempt made.
IT Chapter Two is expected to have an impressive opening weekend and the first film set box office records for horror movies, so there would clearly be an audience interested in seeing this. There's a decent chance that the box office totals will play a large part in Warner Bros. deciding whether or not to give Andy Muschietti the money to finish this project and get his new scenes.
IT Chapter Two is in theaters now.
