Movies
Andy Muschietti Considered Pennywise Taking the Form of Freddy Krueger!
Would this have been awesome or a bit too distracting?
As soon as we learned that New Line was re-adapting Stephen King’s IT and bumping the timeline up to the ’80s, it immediately crossed our mind that Pennywise *could* take the form of another New Line icon, Freddy Krueger. After all, the novel’s Pennywise takes the form of movie monsters that were popular in the ’50s…
The bulk of the story in Andy Muschietti’s IT is set in 1989, hot on the heels of A Nightmare on Elm Street: Dream Child being released. In fact, a theater marquee in one scene advertises that Dream Child is playing in Derry. So it would’ve made perfect sense that one of the kids had seen the film, and was terrified of Freddy Krueger.
As it turns out, Muschietti did consider a Freddy cameo. In a chat with Ain’t It Cool News this week, he revealed why he ultimately decided against it.
“Obviously we considered that for a bit, but I wasn’t too interested in bringing Freddy Krueger into the mix,” Muschietti told the site. “I love the story and I love how Stephen King basically makes a portrait of childhood in the ’50s. He’s very genuine when he brings all the Universal Monsters to the repertoire of incarnation because that’s what kids were afraid of. It would be a natural path to try to recreate that in the ’80s, but I really wasn’t too crazy about bringing stuff like Freddy Krueger into the story. I thought it was a bit too meta with New Line involved in the film. It’s distracting and it didn’t feel right, for some reason.”
He continued, “I wanted to bring fears that were a little more layered and related to childhood trauma and more surprising in general. I think that Stephen King was open to that. When he saw the film I basically wrote a letter to him asking him for forgiveness for having taken so many licenses, especially with the many different incarnations of Pennywise. He said ‘Don’t worry about it. All the changes are great!'”
As cool as it would’ve been to see Pennywise take the form of Freddy, I kind of love that IT doesn’t prey upon nostalgia in ways you’d expect. Instead of hammering us over the head with homages, Muschietti instead focused on telling the best story/making the best film possible, and I think that really shows in the finished product.
Still though, what could have been was pretty damn awesome.
After pulling in $28 million at the worldwide box office this month, director (and star) Dev Patel’s critically acclaimed action-thriller Monkey Man is now available to watch at home.
You can rent Monkey Man for $19.99 or digitally purchase the film for $24.99!
Monkey Man is currently 88% Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, with Bloody Disgusting’s head critic Meagan Navarro awarding the film 4.5/5 stars in her review out of SXSW back in March.
Meagan raves, “While the violence onscreen is palpable and painful, it’s not just the exquisite fight choreography and thrilling action set pieces that set Monkey Man apart but also its political consciousness, unique narrative structure, and myth-making scale.”
“While Monkey Man pays tribute to all of the action genre’s greats, from the Indonesian action classics to Korean revenge cinema and even a John Wick joke or two, Dev Patel’s cultural spin and unique narrative structure leave behind all influences in the dust for new terrain,” Meagan’s review continues.
She adds, “Monkey Man presents Dev Patel as a new action hero, a tenacious underdog with a penetrating stare who bites, bludgeons, and stabs his way through bodies to gloriously bloody excess. More excitingly, the film introduces Patel as a strong visionary right out of the gate.”
Inspired by the legend of Hanuman, Monkey Man stars Patel as Kid, an anonymous young man who ekes out a meager living in an underground fight club where, night after night, wearing a gorilla mask, he is beaten bloody by more popular fighters for cash. After years of suppressed rage, Kid discovers a way to infiltrate the enclave of the city’s sinister elite. As his childhood trauma boils over, his mysteriously scarred hands unleash an explosive campaign of retribution to settle the score with the men who took everything from him.
Monkey Man is produced by Jordan Peele’s Monkeypaw Productions.
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