Stephen King’s IT Will Be Two Movies, Both Of Them Rated R
This week, Collider's Steve Weintraub sat down with producer Roy Lee at the DICE Summit in Las Vegas, and during the course of that conversation, Steve managed to drag a few updates out of Lee regarding Warner Bros.' perpetually-gestating adaptation of Stephen King's It. These updates are both reassuring and not-so-reassuring.
Let's start with the good stuff: Lee confirmed that the plan is for It to be two films, both of which will be rated R. The first film will focus on the "Loser's Club" half of the story (that's the portion of the novel dealing with the kids), while the second will pick up decades later, with the now middle-aged "Losers" reuniting to take on Pennywise The Clown in their old hometown. Interestingly, Lee notes that the films could eventually be re-cut into one film, to more properly mirror the structure of King's novel. All of that sounds good.
Now for the maybe-not-so-good news: Collider also reports that the film's current script has been written by Gary Dauberman*, and is a page-one rewrite of the Cary Fukunaga draft. That name may not be familiar to you, which is one reason I'm going to point out that Gary Dauberman is the guy who wrote Annabelle. Please do with that information what you will.
In neither particularly great or terrible news, Mama director Andy Muschietti is still onboard to direct.
The current plan calls for Muschietti to film both halves of It in the back half of 2016. No word on how they'll roll out the films (one per year? Six months apart? Alternating weekends?), but if I were a betting man I'd wager that the first one will arrive in the summer of 2017, or possibly around Halloween of that year.
Stay tuned for more on this as it develops. Continue to mourn the loss of Cary Fukunaga's It in the comments below.
* = Actually, they're reporting that the script was written by "Gary Doberman", but a quick trip to IMDb reveals that this is almost certainly a typo. This becomes doubly likely when you consider that they're also reporting Andy Muschietti as "Andy Muscietti". No shade, just clarifying.
