Horror hit 'It' to get a director's cut (exclusive)
Hide the kids and break out the red balloons, It is getting supersized. Ringmaster Andy Muschietti has exclusively revealed to Yahoo Movies that he is working on an elongated director’s cut of his record-smashing, nightmare-inducing Stephen King adaptation that will be released with the home edition at the end of the year.
Muschietti and his producer/sister, Barbara Muschietti, broke the news about the It director’s cut on Thursday morning, noting that Warner Bros. had asked them to produce the new version shortly before they came to our studios to participate in a Facebook Live.
Asked if there were any scenes that he found difficult to trim (considering the novel weighed in at 1,000-plus pages), Andy Muschietti said there was one in particular that stood out. “There’s a great scene, it’s a bit of a payoff of the Stanley Uris plot which is the bar mitzvah, where he delivers a speech against all expectations… it’s basically blaming all the adults of Derry [for the town’s history of deadly “accidents” and child disappearances], and it has a great resolution. … Maybe it will be in the director’s cut!”
“Right, we are going to do a director’s cut. We were told this morning,” Barbara Muschietti chimed in.
Andy Muschietti said there would “probably [be] an extra 15 minutes for hardcore fans” in total, including a “very funny” extended version of the quarry scene, where the group of young protagonists who call themselves The Losers’ Club try to gin up the courage to jump off a cliff into the water below.
“After the spitting contest it escalates into something that is completely weird and irrelevant to the scene but is so funny. Jack Grazer, who plays Eddie, does something that is completely bonkers.”
The filmmaker had assembled longer cuts during the production process before ultimately trimming the film to two hours, 15 minutes for its theatrical release. Warner Bros. has not announced a specific release date for DVD/Blu-ray, but it is expected to arrive in time for the holidays, because nothing says Yuletide cheer like a demonic, children-devouring harlequin.
Meanwhile, the Muschiettis said that they are already outlining the story for It: Chapter 2, which will bring back the Losers as adults for a final, fateful confrontation with Pennywise. They said they hope to bring back the young cast in flashback (“before they all have beards”), as well as Bill Skarsg?rd as their clown adversary.
Andy Muschietti also said he’d love to do a new version of Pet Sematary, the first Stephen King novel the filmmaker read, or a screen adaptation of the short story “The Jaunt,” a sci-fi/horror tale about futuristic teleportation technology that allows people to “jaunt” across the universe from the author’s 1985 collection, Skeleton Crew.
First, however, the duo will be working on an adaptation based on the work of a different member of the King clan. They begin production next month on the series Locke and Key, based on the time-hopping supernatural comic book series written by Joe Hill, the pen name of Stephen King’s son Joe Hillstrom King. That series is slated to stream on Hulu in 2018.
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