The following story contains mild spoilers for Stephen King's It. You have been warned.
Stephen King fans who have been anticipating an adaptation of the author's eponymous IT have been wondering how a film would balance the novel's two major storylines. For anyone who hasn't read it, the story of The Losers' Club taking on Pennywise is split between two distinct time periods -- when the characters are children, and when they are adults -- and King masterfully weaves between both time frames throughout the whole book. Early cinematic adaptations of IT tried to blend the adult-and-kid storylines into one movie, but Andres Muschietti's upcoming IT is leaving the adult section out, and only focusing on the kids. When we sat down with the director in San Diego Comic-Con, we asked him why he took that approach, and he told us.
I thought it was a very good idea, because on one hand I love the dialog between the two timelines and I think it's very essential to the original work. But on the other hand, I wanted to immerse the audience into the experience of the childhood of these characters, without poisoning it with jump forwards and jump backs, uh, flashbacks sorry.I really want to make a pure... an experience that is pure and clean. And the second part might have a little bit of that dialogue between the timelines. But the second part is a different story.
In our same conversation, which happened as Andres Muschietti brought IT footage to San Diego Comic-Con, the filmmaker confirmed that he would indeed be directing the second IT movie, and that he'd tackle it before moving on to the RoboTech movie (which he says still needs a script). The second IT movie -- which could be titled IT 2, though that's a little strange -- would follow the characters from this first movie, but 27 years later, as they reunite to face the evil that they thought they killed as children.
Here's a clip from our conversation with Andres Muschietti:
The bigger shoe that needs to drop will be casting. Admittedly, it will be odd for the first IT movie to introduce these characters as kids, helping us to fall in love with younger versions of classic roles like "Trashmouth" Richie Tozier and the endearing Ben Hanscom. Muschietti will then need to find adults who fit the personalities. But the story is so compelling, and if the first movie is as good as we are hearing, I think audiences will want to find out how it all ends for The Losers' Club.
IT opens in theaters on September 8. We will have more from our chat with Andres Muschietti as the movie gets closer.
