That might be good. He got some low-level scares and creepiness out of Jane Eyre. It would be nice to see this approach happen with It.
I’m excited.
Although no one can top Tim Curry. No one.
Yeah, didn’t I hear a while back that Warners was showing interest in Dark Towers after Universal flaked out? As long as Ron Howard doesn’t direct it, I’m in.
Oh, nice! I’ll almost definitely see this. It was by far the best Stephen King book, but I couldn’t even bear watching most of the miniseries.
I didn’t think the Stand was that great, though, and I doubt it would be a good movie…
Well it can certainly only be an improvement.
A little obvious, but Sid Haig would do Pennywise justice…
my favourite Stephen King book so I hope he doesn’t fuck it up, i thought his Jane Eyre was unutterably dull but fingers crossed
This is terrible.
Oh God Why.
I hadn’t realized there was so much love for King’s IT, for me one of his least interesting books — it just went on and on. If it hadn’t been for his remarkable ability to write about children it would have been unbearable.
It’s the only King book I actually finished. I read it in 6th grade and was never able to finish another one of his books (although I started many of them).
@Roscoe
But the vast majority of the book is either about children or adults contemplating their childhoods, so It pretty much plays to that strength.
At this point, I’m behind anything Fukunaga makes. Can’t wait to see what he does with it.
I recently watched the original mini-series for the first time and I loved it. Part one was great, and part two, while disappointing in the finale, still continued on with good characters, yet inevitably became too long. No reason this needs to be remade. Could never capture the campy Television quality that has made it so famed.
Maybe Tim Curry will reprise his role. I’ve never read IT but enjoyed the IT parts of 11/22/63.
@ Bijou:
Thanks for the spoiler…I just started reading 11/22/63……
….just kidding…
I mean I really am reading the book but you didn’t spoil it for me….
Hopefully Fukunaga can do justice to the novel. There is plenty of interesting social/psychological content in that book. It’s a complex, richly characterized horror story and it could be a brilliant movie if done right. The miniseries is pretty good for its medium, but the form is too restrictive for the content.
Most of King’s works are so monumental in length that it’s hard to squeeze them into a filmic format.
I used to be avid into Stephen King, but after a dozen of his books the only ones I’ve come to value are “Rose Madder” and “Roadwork”, a book he did under the Bachman pseudonym. I’ve tallied his writing to be a little above average, but he has too good of tendency of cultivating his own forms of mediocrity.
I read this when it was first published, and then again sometime when I was in high school. The TV series was bad, and though I’m a fan of Curry I thought his Pennywise was goofy (I recognize that he scared the shit out of plenty, so that’s all well and good—to each their own).
Interested in an adaptation from an interesting director, but a bit jaded.
@BRAD — “But the vast majority of the book is either about children or adults contemplating their childhoods, so It pretty much plays to that strength.”
Yes it does, and it is the last of King’s BIG BOOKS that I was able to get through, the feeling that he was padding everything for extreme length just overwhelmed. THE DARK HALF was the last straw — as comparatively brief as it was, it would have been better as a THE MIST-level novella. At some point I decided not to read anything by King that was over 300 pages, and found that I was reading other stuff and King has pretty well fallen off my radar altogether.
Still have a lot of respect for him, don’t get me wrong. Loved THE SHINING and PET SEMATARY and MISERY as novels, and some of those short stories have stayed with me, like the brilliant SURVIVOR TYPE.
“I’ve tallied his writing to be a little above average, but he has too good of tendency of cultivating his own forms of mediocrity.”
Agree, that’s why i’ve never understood his constant complaining about how bad the film versions are. Are we really meant to believe that King is such a complicated writer that not one single fucking director is able to successful translate one of his novels to screen? Give me a break! Granted, a few of them miss the crucial aspects of (black) humour in his work, but overall, the films are as trashy as the novels.
@Joks — “Are we really meant to believe that King is such a complicated writer that not one single fucking director is able to successful translate one of his novels to screen?”
Well, King may not be “complicated” but I’d say he’s able to bring to his work a degree of real humanity and messy reality (all those brand names and little details all over the place — Stephen King knows what you have under your kitchen sink in ways that few American authors do) that all too often doesn’t make it onto the screen. His writing lives on the page in ways that the films based on his writing seldom do onscreen.
Yeah I think films kind of bring out the worst of Stephen King. In the books, his characters may not always be complex, but they’re always compelling in a booky sort of way. King’s “character development” (I hate that term) comes across well (if not particularly deep) in his books, but seems pretty stilted in movies.
I wish he would write more stories for films, cause I think he did a good job with the stories in Creepshow – I feel like he didn’t worry so much about the characters there, and they came across really well. They were shallow and pulpy, but in a really good way. And the segment with Leslie Nielsen was just incredible! But I guess he must not really be interested in that. Does anybody know what his opinion is of Creepshow? Was he happy with how it turned out? He seems kind of like the person who takes himself more seriously than he should, so I wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t like Creepshow now.
Of course, the exception is The Shining – that film is a million times better than the actual book. Kubrick was the best cultivator of King’s mediocrity.
You watched Creepshow and got the impression that the guy who wrote that takes himself seriously?!?! Unlike the Shining, which bore no resemblance to the book it was based on (Making comparisons between the two like apples and oranges), King was fully involved in the Creepshow project.
You watched Creepshow and got the impression that the guy who wrote that takes himself seriously?!?!
Lol – well, no, but… In all his interviews and stuff he seems to take himself pretty seriously. Creepshow seems to be the only time where he’s really giving into pulpiness (I haven’t seen Maximum Overdrive, since I’ve heard it’s a wreck, but that seems pretty schlocky) and not worrying about “character development” and stuff. Does that make sense? So I just wouldn’t be surprised if now that he’s off of coke and taking himself all seriously if he looks back on Creepshow and thinks that it isn’t good.
And I wasn’t comparing Creepshow to the Shining – I just wanted to point out that it was the exception to all my generalization. It is apples and oranges to all the other King adaptations I’ve seen, so I wanted to point that out.
King has written so called “serious” books like Doloras Clairborn and a few others, but this is the killer dog, car, clown, cell phone guy. He’s a pulpy genre writer and a damn good one. (or at least was, he writes a book a year and the most recent I’ve read was Desperation.) Horror is not scary unless you care about the characters, so he’s not going skimp on character development, but with few a exceptions, he’s all about fun and deranged scares.
And your insticts are right about Maximum Overdrive. Directing is not one of his talents.
>>And I wasn’t comparing Creepshow to the Shining<<
Didn’t mean to suggest you were. My point was that Kubrick’s The Shining and King’s The Shining are such vastly different animals, that it should hardly be looked at as an adaptation. I happen to love both.
I read a while ago that King liked Creepshow but that was from an interview dating all the way back to the mid 80’s. I could be wrong though.
He was not involved in the S.E dvd though, in any capacity. could have just been his fee.
Brad S.
by Cary Fukunaga into two films.
I’ve got high hopes for this. It’s probably my favorite Stephen King book and there’s so much character content that dividing into two parts seems justified.
I liked the TV movie quite a bit, but with its cast of sitcom regulars and low budget effects, there’s room for improvement. Whoever plays Pennywise will have big clown shoes to fill, cause Tim Curry owned that role and was creepy as hell.
Rumors are also out there of a big screen The Stand and some form of a Dark Tower adaptation.