Andy Muschietti Talks Holding Nothing Back for “R”-rated ‘IT’

The 1990 mini-series wasn’t allowed to go to the darkest places.

But don’t worry, this year’s adaptation will.

Speaking with French magazine Mad Movies as part of an exclusive feature in the most recent issue, just released this week, IT director Andy Muschietti (Mama) promised that he held nothing back when it came to bringing Stephen King’s nightmarish story back to the screen. The article reveals that the incestuous relationship between Beverly and her father will be included in the movie, as will many of the novel’s darkest elements.

“This is an R rated movie. I’m very happy about that, because it allows us to go into very adult themes,” said Muschietti. “Each ‘loser’ knows a situation of despair, on top of the terror of It and the fear of heights. Beverly’s case is of course the worst, because it’s 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 can’t get over Georgie’s death. Of course, Ben is bullied at school. We don’t know much about Richie’s personality, because he’s the big mouth of the group. But we suppose he’s also neglected at home, and he’s the clown of the band because he needs attention. Long story short, there’s 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.”

He continued, “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 didn’t try to stop us. In fact it’s more our own moral compass that sometimes showed us that some things lead us in places where we didn’t want to go.”

Sister Barbara Muschietti, producer of IT, added, “To tell everything, you won’t find the scene where a kid 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 didn’t 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 it’s the kids’ fear that feed the monster.”

Big thanks to Auguste Pagliaccio from FB group The Losers’ Club for the translation.

In IT, directed by Andy Muschietti…

A group of young kids face their biggest fears when they seek answers to the disappearance of children in their hometown of Derry, Maine. They square off against an evil clown named Pennywise, whose history of murder and violence dates back for centuries.

The kids in peril, the Losers’ Club, include Jaeden Lieberher, Finn Wolfhard, Jack Dylan Grazer, Wyatt Oleff, Chosen Jacobs and Jeremy Ray Taylor. Javier Botet will play The Leper, and Nicholas Hamilton plays Henry Bowers. The cast also includes Owen Teague, who plays bully Patrick Hocksetter. Bill Skarsgard is our new Pennywise.

The film will be in theaters September 8, 2017.