Scenes that were felt to be too intense for the original are included.
As they rightfully should be, the majority of authors are fiercely protective of their work and given that Stephen King’s novels are more high profile and popular than most, he has had a mixed relationship with adaptations of his work.
As many of you will know, King despised Stanley Kubrick’s version of The Shining but that’s not the only adaptation that King had strong feelings about.
The author has dismissed The Children of the Corn saga, The Lawnmower Man, Dreamcatcher and Firestarter, but it’s clear that King adores Andy Muschietti’s (Mama) take on his iconic novel, IT.
Andy Muschietti's remake of IT (actually it's Part 1–The Losers' Club) succeeds beyond my expectations. Relax. Wait. And enjoy.
— Stephen King (@StephenKing) March 7, 2017
While the trailer frightened us all, it appears that the overall films – it’s being split into two parts – are going to be remarkably faithful to the source material, even more so than the beloved mini-series.
We already knew that ‘the leper’ sequence would be featured in the new version, but in an interview with French magazine Mad Movies, the director and producer have revealed that one of the most horrific backstories in the Losers Club will be examined.
The director, Andy Muschietti, says: “This is an R rated movie. I’m very happy about that, because it allows us to go into very adult themes. Each ‘loser’ knows a situation of despair, on top of the terror of It and the fear of heights. Beverly’s case is of course the worst, because it’s about sexual abuse on a minor. But each kid is neglected one way or the other. Bill is like a ghost in his own home: nobody sees him because his parents can’t get over Georgie’s death. Of course, Ben is bullied at school. We don’t know much about Richie’s personality, because he’s the big mouth of the group. But we suppose he’s also neglected at home, and he’s the clown of the band because he needs attention. Long story short, there’s all sorts of difficult situations, and we had the chance to tell them in a movie that faces directly those conflicts. In particular, the families of the young actors were very open-minded, so we could tell the about subjects that are normally very touchy.”
As fans of the original mini-series will know, Beverly’s backstory wasn’t given too much time to develop, but that’s not the case in the new version.
Producer, Barbara Muschietti, added that there’s only one scene that was deemed to be too horrific to feature in the new film.
“To tell everything, you won’t find the scene where a kid has his back broken and is thrown in the toilets. We thought that the visual translation of that scene had something that was really too much. But for the rest, we removed nothing from our original vision, and we didn’t water down the violence of any event. We believe the fans will be thankful to us for keeping that aspect of the novel in the movie. Well, for now, none of the people who saw the screenings left the theater! I got to say we escape a lot of objections thanks to the context of the story, since it’s the kids’ fear that feed the monster.”
On this note, the director is delighted that he was allowed to make a horrific, gruesome and nightmarish version of King’s beloved novel.
“From our very first discussion with the people from New Line, it was understood that the movie was gonna be rated R. Of course it was already crazy that they started a story revolving around the death of children. But if you aimed for a PG-13 movie, you had nothing at the end. So we were very lucky that the producers didn’t try to stop us. In fact it’s more our own moral compass that sometimes showed us that some things lead us in places where we didn’t want to go,” Andy Muschietti adds.
Prepare to be terrified when IT is unleashed in cinemas on September 8th.
