‘IT’ Director Considered a Freddy Krueger Cameo

Many movie audiences might recognize Pennywise the clown as one of the most memorable images from Stephen King‘s IT, but this is only one incarnation of a terrifying entity that lurks Derry, ME. When crafting his adaptation, director Andy Muschietti at one point considered also bringing in Freddy Krueger from A Nightmare on Elm Street to act as another one of the creature’s manifestations.

“Obviously we considered that for a bit, but I wasn’t too interested in bringing Freddy Krueger into the mix,” Muschietti revealed to Ain’t It Cool News.

Bringing in such a recognizable villain from another franchise might seem jarring, but in the original story and first live-action adaptation, the story takes place in the ’50s. In this time period, “It” uses the image of Universal Monsters to terrify its victims.”

“I love the story and I love how Stephen King basically makes a portrait of childhood in the ’50s,” Muschietti elaborated. “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 [Cinema] involved in the film. It’s distracting and it didn’t feel right, for some reason.”

The different timeline caused immediate changes to the initial story, but King himself apparently championed all of Muschietti’s decisions.

“I wanted to bring fears that were a little more layered and related to childhood trauma and more surprising in general,” the filmmaker confessed. “I think that Stephen King was open to that. 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.”

While it doesn’t sound like we’ll see Krueger anytime soon, the next installment in the story, which focuses on the kids as adults, is sure to bring all new terrors to life.

IT is in theaters now.