Home Entertainment The new IT is dead for now

The new IT is dead for now

1 min read
1

pennywise

Pennywise the clown might be floating around somewhere, but we won’t be seeing him any time soon. Word is that the anticipated new adaptation of Steven King’s iconic horror novel It has ground to a halt.

Director Cary Fukunaga, who has also been the project’s champion, has left. Apparently there have been some big disagreements between him and New Line Cinema. Budget sits at the root of most of it: Fukunaga’s goal to make two pictures isn’t quite what New Line was hoping for, nor did his projections stay inside the planned budget. The first movie was due to cost $30 million, but it appears that Fukunaga had bigger plans.

caryfukunaga

Another issue was that of casting – after negotiations with Ben Mendelsohn fell through due to salary disputes, Fukunaga cast the relatively unknown Will Poulter as Pennywise, the clown that sits at the source of the horror. Other rumblings also indicate that New Line had grown wary of the project, not the least because marketing an adult movie that mainly stars children seemed daunting. It’s been done before, but New Line has learned some heavy lessons in the past around big budget gambles.

In short, it looks like Fukunaga and New Line simply weren’t meant for each other. This obviously leaves It‘s future in doubt and even Stephen King has said the project looks like it is dead – for now, at least. Perhaps New Line will get a new director. But seeing this was Fukunaga’s baby – and It is actually a pretty tough book to put into a movie – it might be better to just pull the plug on this one.

Last Updated: May 26, 2015

One Comment

  1. Off the books until they do an all female cast “re-imagining”… with “popular new songs”

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Check Also

Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy getting anime feature film spinoff The War of the Rohirrim

Twenty years after it's record-breaking award-winning success, Peter Jackson's live-action…