“It” is back.
“It” is a horror film that is based off of a Stephen King novel and a mini-series that premiered in 1990.
The film has already broken records. The trailer for the movie received 197 million views, breaking the previous record that had just been taken by “The Fate of the Furious” trailer.
The movie will have a narrative similar to the book, spanning two time periods. “It” will follow the main characters as children and then as adults three decades later.
A town called Derry, Maine, has a history of missing children, which is due to a clown who comes around every 30 years and lurks in the underground sewer system.
A group of children team up to try and stop the disappearances when Pennywise comes back to town.
According to Andrés Muschietti, the director of the movie, “It” explores the idea of lost innocence.
“It happens in the book, this coming of age and kids facing their own mortality, which is something that in real life happens in a more progressive way and slowed down,” Muschietti said in an interview with USA Today. “There’s a passage [in “IT”] that reads, ‘Being a kid is learning how to live and being an adult is learning how to die.’ There’s a bit of a metaphor of that and it just happens in a very brutal way, of course.”
Muschietti said that this remake of “It” could be even more frightening than the original because of how Pennywise is portrayed.
“It’s established that Pennywise takes the shape of your worst fear,” Muschietti says. “He doesn’t have a steady behavior, he doesn’t expose how he thinks, and that’s what makes him really unpredictable.”
According to one of the film’s producers, Seth Grahame-Smith, King saw the trailer and gave his support for the film.
“Steve asked me to pass along that he saw a screening of IT today and he wanted to let everybody know that they should stop worrying about it as the producers have done a wonderful job with the production,” Smith said.
Some real life clowns are taking offense to the trailer. Matthew Faint, also known as Mattie the clown and the Director of the Hackney clown museum, called the movie “sensational rubbish.”
“There’s just so many horrible movies out there … clowns that eat people or whatever. It takes people’s minds in the wrong direction. We don’t need it. It’s bad, it’s disgusting,” he said at a national clown convention.
The “It” remake is the first part in a series of two films that will be released. The first part, which is coming this fall, will focus on the children while the next installment will take place 30 years later.
“It” is set for release on September 8. Bill Skarsgård will portray Pennywise and follow in the steps of Tim Curry, who played Pennywise in the original series.
Laina Yost
Managing Editor