It producer compares movie to Stranger Things & Stand By Me

Last Updated on August 5, 2021

Talk about a production nightmare. After the remake of IT seemed dead and buried after the version with director Cary Fukunaga and Will Poulter fell through, the film is now back in full swing with MAMA director  Andrés (Andy) Muschietti attached, and HEMLOCK GROVE actor Bill Skarsgard taking on the red nose. Now, it seems, we have peace.

If the fact the movie is in production-mode still doesn’t give you full confidence, maybe the words from the film’s producer Dan Lin will give you a bit of calm. Lin spoke with Collider about the new movie, comparing it to the hit Netflix show, STRANGER THINGS, which itself is a homage to classic 80s movies:

I think a great analogy is actually Stranger Things, and we’re seeing it on Netflix right now. It’s very much an homage to ’80s movies, whether it’s classic Stephen King or even Spielberg . Think about Stand by Me as far as the bonding amongst the kids. But there is a really scary element in Pennywise.”

Each kid, like a Goonies or Stand By Me, has a very specific personality and they’re forming the loser’s club obviously. And now finally the evil force is coming into our movie. We’ve spent a few months getting the kids to bond and now they’re going to fight this evil, scary clown.

As for Pennywise, Skarsgard seems to be a natural playing the demented clown that will be haunting these kids:

His build is really interesting. He’s really tall and lanky, and feels a little clown like in his movement. When he came in — we had a lot of different actors read, and when he came in he had a different spin on the character that got us really excited. You’ve had Heath Ledger doing almost a clown joker, you’ve seen obviously Tim Curry as a clown. We wanted someone who created a Pennywise character that would stand on its own and Bill came in and created this character that frankly freaked us out.

I’m just glad this movie is actually going with an actual end date in sight, and we don’t have to worry of it's going to be cancelled in the next 24 hours. This news that the movie will have a lot of classic 80s-movie inspirations is just the icing on the cake. Given the sad state of many remakes in general, I won’t be 100 percent sold on this film until I see some footage. However, simply because this news is something positive about this movie for a change, my spirits are a little lifted. That, and the fact this image of Pennywise does give me nightmares, which means it's perfect.

IT is set to haunt your dreams on September 8, 2017.