Let’s paint a picture. The date is September 5. It Chapter Two has just opened to massive box office success. Warner Bros. calls director Andy Muschietti and producer Barbara Muschietti and says, “We want more It.” Would they do it? And if so, how?
That’s the question I posed the brother-sister team behind the Stephen King adaptations, the second of which opens September 5. And their answer was both encouraging but also completely understandable.
“The book, as it is, is done,” producer Barbara Muschietti told Gizmodo.
“There is a whole mythology to the book though,” added Andy Muschietti, before getting into some minor spoiler territory for those who haven’t read King’s classic clown horror tale.
“Mythology is something that always has opportunities to explore. It has been on Earth for millions of years. He’s been in contact with humans for hundreds of years, every 27 years. So you can imagine the amount of material,” Muschietti said.
He’s talking here, of course, about what It, aka Pennywise, looked like and did in the centuries before the book. Because, as is revealed in It Chapter Two, he has been in Derry, Maine for a long, long time.
“It’s always exciting to think of eventually exploring this mythology,” Muschietti continues. “It’s very exciting. But, for now, there’s nothing on the table.”
Which, in a roundabout way, answers my questions. Would they do it? Well, there’s mythology to explore and it’s exciting to think about. How? Well, they’d go back and dive into that. But it’s not something that’s happening just yet.
Unfortunately, my pitch for a third film was shut down immediately: Pennywise versus the dinosaurs.
“Yeah, no,” Barbara Muschietti said.
It Chapter Two opens September 5. We’ll have more from the director and producer soon.