‘IT’ Filmmaker Reveals Bizarre Box Office Premonition Came True

To many, the latest adaptation of Stephen King‘s IT becoming such a massive success in its opening weekend was a huge surprise, but to producer Barbara Muschietti, it was a dream come true, in more ways than one. The filmmaker had apparently predicted the film would break the record for a September opening weekend five months earlier than its release.

“I had a premonition like five months ago that it would do $80 [million in its opening weekend],” Muschietti told Variety. “I have no idea why, people kept telling me that I was insane, and I actually turned out being wrong — because it turned out to be higher. Andy has the best attitude toward it, which is, he would keep on shooting until the day of the release of a film if he could, so he isn’t thinking about projections.”

The art of predicting the box office performance of a film is a difficult one, as there are many factors that must be considered. When IT‘s first teaser debuted on YouTube, it set the record of the most viewed movie trailer in a 24-hour period, earning almost 200 million views. This clearly boded well for the film, but with another Stephen King adaptation being a financial and critical disappointment only a month earlier, expectations began to waver.

Debuting early in August, The Dark Tower was primed to be a huge hit for fans of horror, sci-fi, and fantasy. Not a direct adaptation of one of the books in King’s series of novels, the film was both an amalgam of multiple elements of the series and a continuation of the tale of Roland Deschain. Scoring a measly 16% on review aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes and failing to earn even $50 million at the domestic box office in its run, less than half of IT‘s weekend haul of $123 million, King’s kingdom began to show cracks in its foundation.

Heading into the weekend, box office pundits placed IT in the $50 million range for its opening weekend, which would have ousted Hotel Transylvania 2‘s $48 million opening as the best September opening.

Ultimately, IT‘s box office performance not only granted it the best September opening, but also the best Fall opening, and the best opening of a horror film of all time.

IT is currently in theaters.