Andy Muschietti Replaces Cary Fukunaga For Stephen King's 'It'

Warner Bros has been trying to remake Stephen King's It for over six years now. The project, now at New Line, was most recently going to be directed by Cary Fukunaga (True Detective), but the filmmaker left the project after clashing with the studio. But now New Line has found a new filmmaker for their It adaptation: Andrés Muschietti (also known as Andy Muschietti), the director behind the Universal horror hit Mama.

The Hollywood Reporter has the scoop on Muschietti boarding the project. New Line will reportedly search for a newscreenwriter to craft a script to Muschietti's vision, with the plan intact to film the adaptation in two parts. This is strange because one of the reported falling outs between Fukunaga and New Line had to do with the filmmaker's insistence that the adaptation consist of two films, the first featuring the main characters as kids and the second following them into adulthood.Will Poulter was in line to play the evil clown named Pennywise but is no longer officially attached to the project. That said, Poulter could return depending on scheduling and other factors.

I was very impressed by Muschietti's short film Mama, which director Guillermo del Toro called one of the scariest short films he's ever seen. I was less impressed by the feature film adaptation of that short film, although the cinematography was outstanding. This isn't the first time Muschietti has been attached to a Stephen King project — earlier this year he optioned feature rights to The Jaunt, the 1981 Stephen King short story About teleportation travel.

Fukunaga had written the scripts for both It movies with Chase Palmer.  Fukunaga's It was supposed to film last month in New York, but Fukunaga had been butting heads with the studio about his vision for the project, following budget cuts instituted by studio New Line. New Line took issue with Fukunaga's insistence on shooting in New York, instead of a cheaper location, among other things

New Line wanted a single, more commercial movie. The studio was also nervous by the disappointing opening weekend performance of Fox's Poltergeist, in part because the marketing campaign also featured a clown.

When I was younger, I read a lot of Stephen King books. Over the years, Hollywood has turned a lot of King's library of work into crappy horror adaptations – The Shining and the original Carrie might be the two exceptions. For a writer known primarily as a horror novelist, it's surprising that the movie adaptations of his non-horror stories, like Green Mile, Stand By Me and The Shawshank Redemption, are probably better known, and definitely more revered.

But if you asked me when I was 11-years old, what my favorite Stephen King movie was, I would quickly tell you — the 1990 television miniseries adaptation of It. It scared me, kept me up, and I loved it. I remember rewatching the VHS copy that I had recorded off of cable, over and over again.

The paperback edition of It is 1,104 pages, and the miniseries clocked in over 3 hours, at 192 minutes.  The official book description follows: "They were just kids when they stumbled upon the hidden horror of their hometown. Now, as adults, none of them can withstand the force that has drawn them all back to Derry, Maine, to face the nightmare without end, and the evil without a name." The book is availabe for around $9 on Amazon.