IT Director Talks Freedom Of An R-Rating
By Garth Franklin
Sunday, July 16th 2017 8:14 am
Speaking about his upcoming film adaptation of Stephen Kings iconic novel IT, filmmaker Andy Muschetti has spoken about how the films R-rating has given him the freedom to adapt the novel pretty faithfully.
As a result, Muschetti has been able to avoid the problems with the 1990s mini-series adaptation which was limited by content restrictions of the time. During a recent interview with French magazine Mad Movies (via Bloody Disgusting), Muschetti says:
This is an R rated movie. Im very happy about that because it allows us to go into very adult themes. Each loser knows a situation of despair, on top of the terror of It and the fear of heights.
Beverlys case is, of course, the worst, because its about sexual abuse on a minor. But each kid is neglected one way or the other. Bill is like a ghost in his own home: nobody sees him because his parents cant get over Georgies death.
Of course, Ben is bullied at school. We dont know much about Richies personality because hes the big mouth of the group. But we suppose hes also neglected at home, and hes the clown of the band because he needs attention.
Long story short, there are all sorts of difficult situations, and we had the chance to tell them in a movie that faces directly those conflicts. In particular, the families of the young actors were very open-minded, so we could tell the about subjects that are normally very touchy.
From our very first discussion with the people from New Line, it was understood that the movie was gonna be rated R. Of course, it was already crazy that they started a story revolving around the death of children.
But if you aimed for a PG-13 movie, you had nothing at the end. So we were very lucky that the producers didnt try to stop us. In fact, its more our own moral compass that sometimes showed us that some things lead us in places where we didnt want to go.
His sister and the films producer Barbara Muschietti says not everything from the book will be translated. We already know the infamous ******** scene is out, and Muschietti adds details of one other scene that didnt make the cut:
You wont find the scene where a kid [a baby] has his back broken and is thrown in the toilets. We thought that the visual translation of that scene had something that was really too much.
But for the rest, we removed nothing from our original vision, and we didnt water down the violence of any event. We believe the fans will be thankful to us for keeping that aspect of the novel in the movie.
Well, for now, none of the people who saw the screenings left the theater! I got to say we escape a lot of objections thanks to the context of the story since its the kids fear that feeds the monster.
The next trailer for the film is expected to make its debut at Comic Con next weekend and will likely go online shortly after. The film itself is slated to open on the first week of September.
