Stephen King Had One Need for the 2017 Adaptation Of It – SlashFilm

In April 1985, Stephen King told The Washington Post that he was working on a new published book; a book that made him “worry for years.” “I’ve been working on rewriting, and I’m surrounded by this huge manuscript,” he said. “There are times when I think I have to burn it.” Instead, he finished the book, and it hit the shelves more than a year later, in September 1986. The book was “It,” and it would King’s magnum opus. It seems that everything King knew about terror was packed into his mansion about a sinister old organization. like to eat children.

Stephen King has written many books, but if I had to pick three that stand out the most, at least on a public level, it would be “The Shining,” “Pet Sematary,” and of course, “Yes .” While King didn’t invent the concept of the horror clown, he popularized it, and every horror movie character since “It” is indebted to King’s Pennywise, that evil trick that can change a million scary things. King’s book is like the “Godfather Part II” of horror stories, moving forward in time to tell one big, ongoing story. In the 1980s, a group of adults who don’t remember their childhood are called to return to their hometown to fight a supernatural force attacking the children. When they return home, the past comes back, and we see how the group fought the beast when they were children in the late 1950s. Burdened with American sentiment and bloody explosions, “Yes” is one of the best things that King has done, and it has stood for a long time, terrifying generations.

Another reason that “Yes” has endured is that it has been adapted to the screen many times, finding ways to shock people who have not read the book. “Yes” was first adapted as a miniseries in 1990. Tim Curry’s take on Pennywise was almost an instant hit, and it felt like no one could fill his shoes. clown house. But in 2017, the big screen “It” came to shock people again – and Stephen King had one special requirement for this new take on his book old.

Aired in two parts, the 1990 adaptation of “It” is beloved by King fans, especially for Tim Curry’s incredible performance as Pennywise. That said, since the miniseries aired on network TV (ABC, to be exact), they had to cut a lot of King’s content. King is a prolific writer, and “It” doesn’t shy away from graphic and gruesome violence (it also has a gross sex scene that I won’t touch on here, since the two versions of ” It “removes the minute completely intelligently). “ABC is one of the networks that still has a strong censorship code,” King told Cinefantastique magazine as the service continued (via Stephen Jones’ book “Creepshows” ).

So when Hollywood came calling again in the 2010s to adapt “Yes” to the big screen, King saw it as an opportunity to do things differently and not shy away from the obvious parts of his book. . “My only concern was that they continue to try to make as much of the book as they can, which means getting an R rating,” King told Vanity Fair. King added that he wants the big screen to adapt to “more balls to the wall.” He continued:

“The first thing was true enough in the book, and its heart was in the right place, but TV is a fast medium, and the budget is relatively low… even in the 80s it was a lot of things you couldn’t do on television You weren’t supposed to show vulnerable children on television, and that’s what It is.

Of course, when “E” arrived in cinemas in 2017, it was rated R – only the opening scene does not stop showing the child’s bloody hand torn by Pennywise, played by Bill Skarsgård unforgettable. “This” was also a big hit at the box office and ushered in a new revolution for Stephen King for movies and TV – a boom that continues to this day, with many projects that King channels are nearby.