It (2017 film)

• 1. Keeping the Clown Apart

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  The 2017 horror film It kept its young cast away from Bill Skarsgård, the actor who played Pennywise the Dancing Clown. Sophia Lillis, who played Beverly Marsh, explained the plan to Rolling Stone. "We actually weren't allowed to see him until our scenes, because we wanted the horror to be real."

  Andy Muschietti directed the film, which adapts the first half of Stephen King's 1986 novel of the same name. It is set in the fictional town of Derry, Maine. There, seven outcast children, who call themselves the Losers Club, are hunted by a monster that rises out of the sewer in the form of a clown.

  This documentary asks how a project that passed through several directors and many drafts finally reached the screen. It asks who earned the clown's role and what he did with it. It asks how a handful of Ontario towns and some sets built from scratch stood in for a haunted corner of Maine. And it asks what happened when audiences finally sat down to watch.

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• 2. A Long Road to Derry

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  On the 12th of March 2009, Variety reported that Warner Bros. planned to bring Stephen King's novel to the screen. David Kajganich was attached to write the adaptation, with Dan Lin, Roy Lee and Doug Davison producing.

  Kajganich went after the job himself. His challenge was fitting a huge cast, spread across two time periods, into a script of about 120 pages, because Warner Bros. wanted a single film. The studio also wanted an R rating, which he said would let the film honor the book and face the traumas its characters endure. In 2010 he named Buster Keaton as his dream Pennywise, if only the actor were still alive.

  Cary Joji Fukunaga was reported as director in June 2012, co-writing with Chase Palmer. In May 2014 the project moved from Warner Bros. to its New Line Cinema division. Lin told Vulture in December 2014 that the first film would be a coming-of-age story about the children, and the second would follow them as adults. He also relayed the response King sent Fukunaga after reading the script: "Go with God, please! This is the version the studio should make."

  The collapse came in May 2015. Fukunaga had just announced Will Poulter as his Pennywise, after an audition that blew the director away. Three weeks after that announcement, Fukunaga walked away. Reports said he had clashed with New Line, which had approved the first film at a budget of 30 million dollars. Fukunaga said the money was fine and the real fight was over the story. "I was trying to make an unconventional horror film." He added that he wanted Pennywise to be more than just the clown.

  King answered with a quip aimed at Tim Curry, who had played the clown in Tommy Lee Wallace's 1990 miniseries. "The remake of IT may be dead or undead but we'll always have Tim Curry. He's still floating down in the sewers of Derry."

  By the summer of 2015, Andy Muschietti was in negotiations to take over, with his sister Barbara Muschietti expected to produce. In February 2016, Roy Lee said that Gary Dauberman had written the latest draft working with Muschietti, and that the story was being envisioned as two movies. Kajganich said in May 2016 that he did not know whether the new team had touched his drafts. "I may not know until the film comes out."

  Muschietti told Variety in October 2015 that shooting would wait for the following summer. That timing gave him months to work with the children who carry the first film.

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• 3. The Losers Club

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  Bill Denbrough, the stuttering leader of the Losers Club, was played by Jaeden Lieberher. Muschietti described the character this way: "Bill is like a ghost in his own home: nobody sees him because his parents can't get over Georgie's death." Lieberher built the stutter by drawing on YouTube videos and on Colin Firth's performance in The King's Speech (2010).

  Finn Wolfhard, who played the loud-mouthed Richie Tozier, had auditioned in 2015 for Fukunaga's version of the film. He was the only actor cast in both versions. When the group gathered in Toronto, he posted their first photo together with the caption "The Losers Club take Toronto." Muschietti's read on Richie was that he is probably neglected at home and plays the clown of the group to get attention.

  Wyatt Oleff played Stanley Uris, whom Muschietti made the son of a rabbi, a change from the novel. The director wanted Stanley to carry a sense of responsibility and a hint of oppression from his father. Oleff's first scene on set was Stanley's bar mitzvah speech. It took about ten hours to film, and a whole new paragraph was added to his lines while the crew was shooting.

  Chosen Jacobs played Mike Hanlon, who lives on his grandfather's farm on the edge of Derry. Mike is one of the only African-American residents of the town. Jacobs said that this isolation, shaped by racial tension, makes Mike treasure anyone who accepts him. He called the shoot "my favorite summer of my 16 long years on earth."

  Jack Dylan Grazer played Eddie Kaspbrak, a sickly boy who only feels truly well around his friends. Jeremy Ray Taylor played Ben Hanscom, a shy boy who is bullied at school and afraid of heights. Ben is also the one who digs up Derry's long record of tragedy.

  Wolfhard told GQ that whenever he is in Los Angeles, he stays with Wyatt, who plays Stanley. Grazer recalled shooting a scene in which the group huddles around Stanley as he breaks down. "Because of the friendships, it's real."

  Nicholas Hamilton, who played the bully Henry Bowers, prepared by studying Jarred Blancard's performance as the same character in the 1990 miniseries. Blancard then spoke with Hamilton and advised him on how to play the character's meanness. Hamilton argued that Bowers has layers, because he lives under a father he is forced to live up to.

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• 4. Casting Pennywise

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  Will Poulter's exit in April 2016, blamed on scheduling conflicts, sent New Line back to the search. Poulter explained that Fukunaga had selected him and that he had not yet connected with the new director. Mark Rylance, Ben Mendelsohn, Kirk Acevedo, Hugo Weaving, Jenny Slate and Tilda Swinton were all considered. Mendelsohn passed, because New Line wanted him to take a sizable pay cut.

  In June 2016, Muschietti chose Bill Skarsgård. Producer Dan Lin said many actors had read for the part. Skarsgård stood out because he is tall and lanky and moves a little like a clown. Lin compared the problem to earlier screen clowns, from Heath Ledger's Joker to Tim Curry's Pennywise. The producers wanted a version that could stand on its own, and Lin said Skarsgård created one that frankly freaked them out.

  Skarsgård described the role in stark terms. "He's not even a clown. I'm playing just one of the beings It creates." He saw the creature as enjoying the game and the hunt. On the shadow of Curry, he was direct: "I'll never be able to make a Tim Curry performance as good as Tim Curry."

  Muschietti said the character is childish and sweet on the surface, with something very off underneath. He wanted a Pennywise who does not lurk. "Pennywise shows up, he's front and center, and he does his show."

  Costume designer Janie Bryant told Entertainment Weekly on the 16th of August 2016 that she wanted a clown from another time. Producer Barbara Muschietti called him "the ancestral clown," and Andy Muschietti said that the 20th-century clown looked cheap to him. Bryant's form-fitting suit echoes the Medieval, Renaissance, Elizabethan and Victorian eras. A Fortuny pleating gives the fabric a crepe-like effect. Short pants, a high-waisted jacket, and puffed shoulders and bloomers give the figure a doll-like, child-like quality.

  The suit is mostly dusky gray, in keeping with King's description of a silvery gray clown. Orange pompoms and trim in orange, red and cinnamon pull the eye. Bryant's manufacturer built 17 different clown costumes to cover the action.

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• 5. Fear Made Personal

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  In October 1988, twelve-year-old Bill Denbrough folds a paper sailboat for his seven-year-old brother Georgie. The boat sails down a rainy street and drops into a storm drain. Georgie looks in and finds a clown, who calls himself Pennywise the Dancing Clown. Pennywise bites off Georgie's arm and drags him into the sewer.

  The following summer, Bill and his friends Richie, Eddie and Stanley run afoul of the bullies Henry Bowers, Belch Huggins, Patrick Hockstetter and Victor Criss. Bill still hopes Georgie might be alive and searches the marshy wasteland called the Barrens. Ben Hanscom learns that unexplained tragedies and child disappearances have plagued Derry for centuries. The group finds the sneaker of a missing girl, Betty Ripsom. Beverly Marsh and Mike Hanlon join them, and together they compare notes.

  Every member of the group has met the clown in a different shape. Ben is chased by a headless undead boy, and Eddie by a rotting leper. A sink sprays blood that only children can see in Beverly's bathroom. Stan watches a painting of a woman come alive. Mike relives his parents burning alive, and a phantom of Georgie haunts Bill. The children conclude that It wakes every 27 years to feed on Derry's children, and that its path runs through the sewers to an old well under an abandoned house on Neibolt Street.

  The novel is set in the 1950s, and its monsters came mostly from old movies. Muschietti named the Wolf Man, the Mummy, Frankenstein and Dracula. For the film, the children's story moved to the 1980s. He told Variety, "I wanted to bring out deeper fears, based not only on movie monsters but on childhood traumas."

  The climax begins when Beverly incapacitates her sexually abusive father and Pennywise abducts her. The Losers descend into his lair, where the bodies of the dead children float in mid-air. Pennywise offers to spare the others and hibernate if they leave him Bill. They refuse and beat him back, and he falls down a well. Afterward, Beverly describes a vision of them fighting It again as adults, and the group swears a blood oath to return.

  Producer Dan Lin defended the R rating bluntly. "It is a scary clown that's trying to kill kids." Muschietti told Mad Movies that aiming for PG-13 would have left them with nothing. Barbara Muschietti said that only one scene was judged too horrific to film: a boy having his back broken and being thrown into the toilets.

  Muschietti sees a loss-of-innocence story underneath. He pointed to a line from the novel: "Being a kid is learning how to live and being an adult is learning how to die." He also read a survival motive into Pennywise. "In order to be alive in the imagination of children, he has to keep killing."

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• 6. Ontario Plays Maine

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  Production designer Mara LePere-Schloop traveled to Bangor, Maine, and by the 31st of March 2015 had scouted the Thomas Hill Standpipe and the land beside the Kenduskeag Stream, which stands in for the Barrens. She also looked at the Waterworks on the Penobscot River. The film was shot in Ontario instead. Principal photography began in Toronto on the 27th of June 2016 and ended on the 21st of September 2016, with locations across the Greater Toronto Area.

  Barbara Muschietti explained the choice of Port Hope, Ontario, as the main stand-in for Derry. "Port Hope is the kind of place we all wish we had grown up in." She wanted an idyllic town that would contrast with the story, and about 360 local extras took part. A call for 100 background performers also drew more than 300 people by 4 p.m. on the first day.

  By the 8th of July 2016, Port Hope had been dressed as Derry. The municipal hall became the Derry Public Library, and a shoe store front became a butcher shop. A hair salon turned into Tony's Barber Shop, and a tattoo shop into Derry Scoop. A statue of Paul Bunyan appeared in Memorial Park, and American flags replaced the Canadian ones downtown. The Capitol Theatre was made to show Batman (1989) and Lethal Weapon 2 (1989), which fixes the film's setting in 1989. Shooting in Port Hope ended on the 18th of July at Watson's Guardian Drugs.

  Oshawa supplied the haunted house. Crews built a facade on a vacant lot at the dead end of James Street, using prefabricated modules trucked in and fitted around scaffolding by IATSE carpenters. In Riverdale, Toronto, filming took place at Cranfield House, a heritage-designated building from around 1902 at 450 Pape Avenue.

  Cinematographer Chung Chung-hoon shot the film on Arri Alexa XT Plus and Alexa Mini cameras in a 2.39:1 aspect ratio. Muschietti wanted a hot summer in which everyone sweats and faces shine. Chung considered a period look but dropped the idea, because the sets and costumes already carried the 1980s. "Trying to make a movie set in the 1980s look like the 1980s can be dangerous." He kept the lighting natural, since a natural look scares people best.

  Colorist Stephen Nakamura graded the film at EFILM in DaVinci Resolve. He treated Derry as a pleasant small town where wild things happen, so much of the film stays high-key. For the Dolby Cinema version, he produced an HDR pass at 31 foot-lamberts, against 14 for the standard digital version. In that pass, the underground battle goes darker while holding every scary detail.

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• 7. Sewers and Special Effects

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  Production designer Claude Paré and Muschietti spent roughly three months of mornings working out the sewers and the cistern beneath Derry. Paré wanted brick for period accuracy, but the cost was too great. His team built the tunnels from formed concrete, cast with planks and plywood sheets. He gave special attention to the water drainage and to water marks that echo New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.

  The house at 29 Neibolt Street was one of the production's biggest challenges. Paré wanted it to stand beside the Bates house in Psycho (1960) and the Overlook Hotel in The Shining (1980). Its exterior was built in Oshawa, and the interiors were shot in a former hospice. Six months after principal photography, Paré built a clown room at Pinewood Toronto Studios, because Muschietti felt the Neibolt sequence needed more scares. The room mixes mannequins in wigs and masks with real people who begin to move.

  In the cistern, Pennywise keeps a wagon and a heap of clothes and toys from the children he has killed. The whirling vortex of floating bodies came from Muschietti and Paré, and Muschietti called the floating a "metaphor for dying." Paré kept the count to roughly a year's worth of children. He reasoned that those children serve as a reserve for the next 27 years.

  Nicholas Brooks supervised the visual effects, and Rodeo FX completed 95 shots. They built digital assets to enhance or replace Skarsgård's Pennywise, and also the giant abandoned cistern. Atomic Arts created the paper boat sequence that fills much of the first trailers. Every shot from it made the final film. Barbara Muschietti said computer-generated imagery would be a support tool, used as little as possible and never standing alone.

  Editor Jason Ballantine described the film as a series of individual encounters with Pennywise, each built toward its own jump scare. He deliberately mixed up the rhythms. The first assembly was massively long, so scenes had to be tightened or cut. Sound designer Paul Hackner said that the mix relies on small sounds, such as water drips and foot creaks, and on silence itself. When Ballantine had arranged a good chunk of selects in order, the finished cut of that batch ran to about a third of the original length.

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• 8. Influences and Aftermath

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  The Howling (1981), The Thing (1982) and Near Dark (1987) were the horror films Muschietti cited for their visceral authority. He added The Goonies (1985) and Stand by Me (1986) to the 1980s picture, and credited Clive Barker, John Carpenter and Joe Dante. He named Steven Spielberg for his strong emotional element. Describing the film's tone toward childhood, Muschietti said, "There's the Spielberg moments and there's the Larry Clark moments." He also traced his storytelling to Jorge Luis Borges, Adolfo Bioy Casares and Horacio Quiroga, though his love of horror came mainly from English-language movies.

  Producer Roy Lee compared the film to Netflix's Stranger Things, calling both a homage to 1980s movies. Benjamin Wallfisch was hired in March 2017 to compose the score. The film premiered at the TCL Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles on the 5th of September 2017. It opened across the United States on the 8th of September, in 2D and IMAX formats.

  The release set box office records. It grossed more than 704 million dollars worldwide, making it the third-highest-grossing R-rated film at the time. Re-releases pushed the total past 719 million dollars. Unadjusted for inflation, it became the highest-grossing horror film of all time.

  Critics praised the performances, direction, cinematography and score, and some called it one of the best Stephen King adaptations. It earned a Critics' Choice Movie Award nomination for Best Sci-Fi/Horror Movie and appeared on several end-of-year lists. Muschietti's own advice for horror applies to all of it. "Stay true to what scares you. If you don't respect that, you can't scare anyone."

  The second film, It Chapter Two, arrived in 2019 and covered the rest of the book. In 2025, HBO premiered a prequel series, It: Welcome to Derry, with Bill Skarsgård returning as Pennywise.

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