Director Cary Fukunaga exits adaptation of Stephen King’s It

Last Updated on August 5, 2021

Cary Fukunaga was expected to start filming his big screen version of Stephen King's It this summer, but The Wrap has learned that the director will no longer helm the project, and the film has been delayed indefinitely. IT moved from Warner Bros. to New Line a few weeks ago, and sources tell the site that Fukunaga "repeatedly clashed with the studio and did not want to compromise his artistic vision in the wake of budget cuts that were recently demanded by New Line."

Fukunaga's plan was to split the book into two movies with SON OF RAMBOW actor Will Poulter as Pennywise the clown, and recent drafts of the script were coming in over the first film's $30 million greenlit budget. Sources also say the director wanted to shoot in New York (which isn't cheap), and New Line was getting cold feet about the movie after the soft opening for POLTERGEIST over the weekend, which used a clown as part of its marketing campaign.

Before Will Poulter was cast as Pennywise, Cary Fukunaga apparently wanted Ben Mendelsohn for the role, however New Line wanted the actor to take a big pay cut. Mendelsohn decided to pass on the project, and moved on to Gareth Edwards' Star Wars spin-off ROGUE ONE. There's no word on if New Line will use Fukunaga's plans and scripts for the films or start from scratch, but one source told The Wrap that IT "was dead as currently constituted."

The remake of IT may be dead–or undead–but we'll always have Tim Curry. He's still floating down in the sewers of Derry.

— Stephen King (@StephenKing) May 25, 2015

What do you think New Line should do with IT?