Stephen King Says He’s Seen ‘It’ Twice, Wasn’t Prepared for ‘How Good It Really Was’

Since his first novel, Carrie, was turned into a film by Brian De Palma back in 1976, dozens of Stephen King stories have been adapted into other mediums. Considering the author gets a paycheck along with every adaptation, you’d think he’d happily promote them at every chance he got, but this isn’t always the case.

The upcoming adaptation of his epic novel It hits theaters next week, and with the story having previously received a mini-series adaptation, fans are holding the new version to an incredibly high standard. Luckily, the very author himself is more than happy to quell any fears fans might have, having revealed in a recent featurette just how happy he was with the latest version from director Andy Muschietti.

The author has even gone the extra mile in support of the film, placing a red balloon in the front window of his house in Bangor, ME, so any tourists hoping to catch a glimpse of the horror icon’s abode gets a reminder of his film coming to theaters next week.

“I was not prepared for how good it really was.”

The film’s original director Cary Fukunaga, left the project over creative differences, which immediately made fans fearful that the production could be doomed. King seemed to have adopted a cautiously optimistic approach to the film, with those expectations being exceeded.

“I had hopes, but I was not prepared for how good it really was,” the author revealed. “It’s something that’s different and, at the same time, it’s something that audiences are going to relate to. They’re going to like the characters. To me, it’s all about character. If you like the characters, you care, and then the scares generally work.”

He added, “I’m sure my fans will enjoy the movie. I think they’re going to really enjoy the movie. I think that some of them will go back two or three times to actually savor the thing. I went back and saw it a second time and felt that I was seeing things the second time through that I missed the first time.”

“He’s got big shoes to fill, let’s face it…”

The most notable thing about the last adaptation of the story was Tim Curry’s portrayal of Pennywise, the terrifying clown. More than any other element of the new adaptation, the most pressure fell on the shoulders of Bill Skarsgard, the actor tasked with playing the character.

King assured, “Skarsgard was great as Pennywise. He’s got big shoes to fill, let’s face it, because people remember Tim Curry as Pennywise the clown and they remember the look that Pennywise had.”

The creepy clown is only one form taken by the entity “It,” with King revealing what inspired the other images the villain took in the novel and previous mini-series.

“I was thinking about the Universal Monsters, the ones that scared kids in the ’50s,” King explained. “Well, they’ve moved the timeframe, they had to, to the ’80s. To me, that isn’t the important thing. The important thing is they kept the core idea that Pennywise gets to these kids by finding out what they’re afraid of and being that thing.”

“You don’t want them to be spam in a cabin…”

Despite initial doubts about the film’s quality after the original director left the project, King was clearly impressed by Andy Muschietti’s work.

King detailed, “Let me just say that I had hopes, strong hopes, for the movie because I knew Andy’s work from Mama and I thought he was a really, really talented director. I also loved the idea of concentrating on the kids half of the story.”

The story of It features a young group of characters who band together to battle the entity, only to discover 27 years later that the threat still looms. The mini-series jumped back and forth between that past and present, with the new adaptation focusing solely on the characters as kids.

At its core, more than the monsters the story conjures, King detailed that the protagonists and their journey is what matters most.

“One of the things that I wanted to do in the novel, and in all of my novels, is to create characters who are fundamentally decent, by and large,” King confesses. “That way, you don’t want them to be spam in a cabin. You don’t want them wiped out. You want them to live and you want them to win. I think that translates to the film. That’s one of the reasons I really like this movie.”

It lands in theaters September 8.