Andy Muschietti‘s Stephen King adaptation and immediate box office colossus It isn’t lacking at things to soak in, but we nearly had a very special horror icon cameo added the excitement. Does Pennywise play well with other spooky folk?
Speaking with Ain’t It Cool News, Muschietti shared that the idea of a Freddy Krueger cameo was (sorry) floated out there. The 80s backdrop opened the possibility for the Nightmare on Elm Street death-dealing wisenheimer showing up, although Muschietti didn’t love what that the friendly horror-to-horror pop-in would bring in.
“Obviously we considered that for a bit, but I wasn’t too interested in bringing Freddy Krueger into the mix,” explained the It director. “I love the story and I love how Stephen King basically makes a portrait of childhood in the ’50s. He’s very genuine when he brings all the Universal Monsters to the repertoire of incarnation because that’s what kids were afraid of. It would be a natural path to try to recreate that in the ’80s, but I really wasn’t too crazy about bringing stuff like Freddy Krueger into the story. I thought it was a bit too meta with New Line involved in the film. It’s distracting and it didn’t feel right, for some reason.”
Having Freddy make an appearance in the film would probably make more sense than having the Pumpkinheads of the world invade the screen, although we’re pretty happy with the end result we got.
“I wanted to bring fears that were a little more layered and related to childhood trauma and more surprising in general. I think that Stephen King was open to that,” said Muschietti. “When he saw the film I basically wrote a letter to him asking him for forgiveness for having taken so many licenses, especially with the many different incarnations of Pennywise. He said ‘Don’t worry about it. All the changes are great!’ I think he understands adaptations are a different animal. Of course it could go well and it could go bad, but I think in this case he really enjoyed it.”
There’s no set date for the sequel to It, but production is targeted to begin in spring 2018. In the meantime, let’s get our casting suggestion collages out.
(Via Ain’t It Cool News and The Wrap)
