If The Dark Tower was dead on arrival (our review), scoring a paltry $19 million in its opening weekend on domestic soil, then 2017’s other high-profile Stephen King adaptation, It, is poised for a potentially record-breaking box office splash in three weeks’ time.
Initial tracking suggests Andy Muschietti’s long-anticipated horror reboot is set for a huge $50 million opening weekend in the United States. And that’s merely the conservative estimate. Other analysts believe It‘s debut will scale as high as $60 million, in which case New Line and Muschietti’s R-rated thriller will set a new record for the month of September. The last live-action film to break past $40 million was Insidious: Chapter 2, while Hotel Transylvania 2 opened to around $48 million. That’s the number to beat, even if New Line and Warner Bros. are being cautious in their own internal projections.
Regardless of the exact figure it hits, it looks like Muschietti’s got a winner on his hands here, and though many people will be curious to see if it’s as scary and effective as the 1990 miniseries, it doesn’t sound like the director’s too concerned with that. In fact, as he told SFX Magazine in a recent interview, he’s not even a fan of the original.
“To be honest, I wasn’t a big fan of the miniseries,” Muschietti told the mag. “I was not a child anymore when it came out in 1990. So my attachment was very much to the book and to the world of Stephen King more than the miniseries.”
Continuing on, he said that while he realizes that many people hold the miniseries in high regard, a lot of its impact came from viewers watching it at a young age.
“I totally acknowledge how iconic that miniseries was for a generation,” he made sure to note. “But also you have to say that it impacted that generation because they saw it with very young eyes as a TV movie or on VHS. A lot of people don’t remember the whole thing, but they are terrified of the iconic scenes of the clown behind the sheets in the beginning and the storm drain.”
Hailing from some far-flung corner of space, the ancient being known as Pennywise is creeping ever closer, and we can hardly wait to see Bill Skarsgård’s monster light up the big screen. September 8 is the date for your diaries, at which point we’ll be able to form a clearer picture of New Line’s tentative It sequel plans and the possibility of revisiting The Losers Clubs as adults.
