Yesterday we shared some new stills from the Mad Movies magazine coverage of STEPHEN KING'S IT. In that post I asked if someone could translate the article for me and, while no one sent me anything specifically, I was able to find a translation online. So there.
Anyhow, it turns out the article had a lot to do with director Andres Msuchietti talking about the film's R-rating and what that allows him to explore, unlike the ABC mini-series, which had to stick fairly PG-13. You can read Andres' comments below, along with his sister/producer Barbara's, and then at the bottom is some concept art via EW.
Check it all out and then make sure to hit us up on social media and let us know what you think of the director's comments and the new stills on Facebook, Twitter, and/or Instagram!
Andres Muschiettti on R-rated IT:
This is an R rated movie. I’m very happy about that because it allows us to go into very adult themes. Each ‘loser’ knows a situation of despair, on top of the terror of It and the fear of heights. Beverly’s case is, of course, the worst, because it’s about sexual abuse on a minor. But each kid is neglected one way or the other. Bill is like a ghost in his own home: nobody sees him because his parents can’t get over Georgie’s death. Of course, Ben is bullied at school. We don’t know much about Richie’s personality because he’s the big mouth of the group. But we suppose he’s also neglected at home, and he’s the clown of the band because he needs attention. Long story short, there are all sorts of difficult situations, and we had the chance to tell them in a movie that faces directly those conflicts. In particular, the families of the young actors were very open-minded, so we could tell the about subjects that are normally very touchy.
From our very first discussion with the people from New Line, it was understood that the movie was gonna be rated R. Of course, it was already crazy that they started a story revolving around the death of children. But if you aimed for a PG-13 movie, you had nothing at the end. So we were very lucky that the producers didn’t try to stop us. In fact, it’s more our own moral compass that sometimes showed us that some things lead us in places where we didn’t want to go.
Sister/Producer Barbara Muschietti on IT:
To tell everything, you won’t find the scene where a kid has his back broken and is thrown in the toilets. We thought that the visual translation of that scene had something that was really too much. But for the rest, we removed nothing from our original vision, and we didn’t water down the violence of any event. We believe the fans will be thankful to us for keeping that aspect of the novel in the movie. Well, for now, none of the people who saw the screenings left the theater! I got to say we escape a lot of objections thanks to the context of the story since it’s the kids’ fear that feeds the monster.
STEPHEN KING'S IT synopsis:
A group of young kids faces their biggest fears when they seek answers to the disappearance of children in their hometown of Derry, Maine. They square off against an evil clown named Pennywise, whose history of murder and violence dates back for centuries.
STEPHEN KING'S IT is directed by Andrés Muschietti from a script by Chase Palmer & Cary Joji Fukunaga and Gray Dauberman, based on the novel by Stephen King.
The film stars Jaeden Lieberher, Sophia Lillis, Finn Wolfhard, Wyatt Oleff, Jack Dylan Grazer, Jeremy Ray Taylor, Chosen Jacobs, Nicholas Hamilton, Owen Teague, Javier Botet, Steven Williams, and Bill Skarsgård as Pennywise the Dancing Clown.
STEPHEN KING'S IT hits theaters nationwide September 8th.