Let’s face it, everyone is excited about seeing the reimagining of Pennywise The Clown and his reign of terror among the group of childhood friends but there is that question of “Do we REALLY need this?” It depends where you sit in the spectrum. Horror fans LOVE Tim Curry (Rocky Horror Picture Show, Clue) and what made the original IT made for TV movie was his portrayal of Pennywise the Clown albeit his most famous role to date besides playing Dr Frankenfurter in RHPS.
Another thing the average horror fan can agree with is that the first half of the original IT was scary, chilling and made it hard to sleep at night, but for the second half it was really hard to care for the adults as the story lagged and was watered down for TV, but still a wonderful film. IT happen to come at a time where shows such as Twin Peaks and The X Files came to play and overall dominated the horror fan’s world as cult TV shows because let’s face it, original content was still reigning supreme and with edgy/ entertaining shows on basic channels.
In a few scenes in the book IT, written by the legendary Stephen King, the kids engaged sexually with one another and there were plenty of hard R rated content scattered within the pages of the 2,000 page book. It would be nice to see these hard R moments on the big screen because anyone who has read the book knows how deep this movie can become. The one way ( the truest way) Hollywood could screw this up is with their PG-13 rating and watered down content. The year is 2016 where PG-13 movies become more watered down than early 90’s mini series made for TV. I will never know why Hollywood targets for PG-13 ratings because with this in mind it still doesn’t help with sales, it just becomes lackluster content in which executive producers spend too much money for.
It’s sad we live in a day and age where mainstream horror is just a reboot of a cult film and takes a crap all over the carpet with it such as The Fog, Total Recall, Poltergeist, Robocop, Prom Night, House of Wax and of course The Nightmare on Elm street despite the R ratings which still did the film no justice. Original ideas are running out because the multi-million dollar movie industry is lazy.
Anyway, Bill Skarsgard is playing the role of Pennywise.. Good luck Bill.