IT film gets a major update

When I was a wee little lad, the mini-series of IT used to scare the living clown shoes off of me. Back in those days of yore, it was hard to think of anything scarier. Luckily for me, a fear of clowns was not preserved (unless they have sharp teeth), and I’ve moved on to more frightening media. I am however afraid that the upcoming film version will bring the fear back, and according to the update out today, the project is still on it’s way.

You can check out the update by the writer Dave Kajganich after the break.

“When I heard Warner Bros. was going to give the novel a go theatrically, I went after the job hard. I knew the studio was committed to adapting IT as a single film, so I went back and reread the novel to see if I thought this was even possible, and to try to find a structure that would accommodate such a large number of characters in two different time periods, around 120 pages, which was another of the studio’s stipulations. Had I not worked with the producers before, I might have been more tentative about trying to pull off such a massive undertaking, but I’d worked with Dan Lin, Roy Lee, and Doug Davison on our original version of The Invasion, and I knew they would fight for good storytelling, and would also give me the time I needed to work out a solid first draft, which they did. They really went to bat for that. We’ve done some tinkering with it and I am just about to turn that draft in to the studio, so we’ll soon know a lot more. In all of my talks with the studio, it has only ever been discussed as a single feature film. The book’s length is clearly more suited to a mini-series—and I understand very well why they went that route the last time around—but I think the book’s content is really more appropriate for cinema. I told the studio from the beginning that I felt I needed to be able to write for an R rating, since I wanted to be as candid as the novel about the terrible things the characters go through as kids. They agreed and off I went. … I think the biggest difference [between the big screen adaptation and the miniseries] is that we’re working with about two-thirds the onscreen time they had for the miniseries. That sounds dire, I know, but it doesn’t necessarily mean two-thirds the amount of story. I’m finding as many ways as I can to make certain scenes redundant by deepening and doubling others. To me, this is an interesting process because it has the effect of thematically intensifying the whole, but it can lead to dramatic surprises. Certain scenes I thought would be crucial to the coherence of the whole ended up cut, while other scenes, which were somewhat cursory in the book, ended up being pivotal in the script. I know I’m being vague, but there’s not a lot I can tell you at this point about the specifics, since we’re still very much in development on it. I’ll just say for now that we’re really swinging for the fences.”

It’s good to see that so much thought is being put into the project, because it has the potential to be really great. I think that’s the case with a lot of Stephen King’s work, some of which has worked on screen and most of which hasn’t. I think that with the proper considerations and care, this could be one of the good ones.

Source: Lilja’s Library, via /Film