Are you getting hyped for IT: Welcome To Derry yet? Well, you should be, particularly after this week. On Sunday, we reported on the story of how the brilliant Bill Skarsgård ended up getting called back to the role of Pennywise The Dancing Clown… and as if that wasn’t notable enough, the first reaction to the series arrived online from Stephen King himself (he calls it “amazing” and highlights the debut episode as being “terrifying”). Excitement for the upcoming King show is presently high, but there is something that audiences should know about the show ahead of its arrival in a few weeks.
The main story in this week’s edition of The King Beat concerns why fans shouldn’t anticipate that the first episode of IT: Welcome To Derry will be filled to the brim with Pennywise action, as there is a specific approach being taken with the killer clown in the new show. But that’s not all, as I’m also taking a quick look at how Stephen King movies have been performing at the box office this year. There’s a whole lot to discuss, so let’s dig in!
Prepare To Be Patient, As IT: Welcome To Derry Plans To Keep Us Champing At The Bit For Pennywise
Bill Skarsgård would be reprising the evil role for the show in May 2024, and audiences have been anticipating the resurrection ever since – left to be satiated by minor glimpses of the sinister clown in trailers and previews.
Andy Muschietti says that the Jaws approach is being taken with the show – referencing the Steven Spielberg classic directly. Said the filmmaker,
It’s about a build-up of tension. In a series, it translates to basically not showing the monster in a movie until it’s the right time. It’s the Jaws effect. It’s very basic. The idea is building tension around the apparition of a monster that we know already, and people are waiting – when is it going to appear? It’s very appropriate for a monster that is a shapeshifter to appear in several different shapes and manifestations before he shows up as a clown. So I thought that was fun.
So what is the payoff? To keep the comparison to Jaws going, I imagine that anyone who has seen the movie will never forget seeing the shark pop out while Roy Scheider’s Brody is at the back of the Orca scooping chum into the water. We may all like and have grown accustomed to instant gratification, but delayed gratification has its big perks too, like satisfying ballooning expectations (yes, that pun was entirely intentional).
When we do finally get a full dose of Pennywise on IT: Welcome To Derry, Andy Muschietti promises that audiences will get that satisfaction, saying,
As a concept it was pretty basic to me that we would delay the apparition of the monster to create that good anxiety and suspense. When it appears, it appears in a big way. I thought it would be very gratifying for the audience to delay that climax.
This brings us to an important question: if the series isn’t going to be sending chills down our spines with the nightmarish visions of Pennywise, how is it going to be generating its scares? Looking back on the IT movies, you’ll remember that wasn’t an issue in the slightest, with its horrifying alternate forms including a rotting leper, a distorted woman from a Modigliani-esque painting, a monstrous Paul Bunyan statue, and much more.
reports about the show first arriving in early 2022, the wait for IT: Welcome To Derry has been considerable, but it is now so close that we can practically smell the wastewater of the Derry sewers. Arriving as the penultimate Stephen King title of 2025 (following The Monkey, The Life Of Chuck, The Institute and The Long Walk), the show will be debuting on HBO starting October 26, and it will be made available to stream instantly for those with an HBO Max subscription.
The Numbers, it turns out that two titles from this year have entered the Top 20 when it comes to worldwide box office grosses for Stephen King movies. The highest-grossing of the pair is Osgood Perkins’ The Monkey, which was made with a tiny budget ($10-11 million, per Vulture) but finished its big screen run in the early months of the year making $63.7 million. Without adjusting for inflation, that’s not quite as much as what Mike Flanagan’s Doctor Sleep earned six years ago ($72.4 million), but it eclipsed Rob Reiner’s Misery in the ranking.
More recently, Francis Lawrence’s The Long Walk entered the Top 20, and it’s worth noting that the critically acclaimed film is still playing in theaters nationwide. To date, the movie has made $43.9 million, which is good enough for it to be declared as the 18th biggest Stephen King movie of all time – having now made more money at the box office than Paul Michael Glaser’s The Running Man from 1987 ($48.1 million).
Will Edgar Wright’s upcoming remake of The Running Man, starring Glen Powell, be able to out-gross them all when it arrives in theaters on November 14? In just a little over a month.
That wraps up this week’s edition of The King Beat, but as always, I’ll be back here on CinemaBlend next Thursday with a brand new roundup of all the biggest news out of the world of Stephen King. And if you’re as excited as we are for IT: Welcome To Derry, you should most definitely pay close attention to the site in the coming weeks, as we’ll have a lot of exciting original interviews and features coming your way!