Movies
Who Will Play Pennywise in Stephen King’s ‘It’?
This past weekend Warner Bros. Pictures and New Line Cinema announced that the long-gestured adaptation of Stephen King’s It will now hit theaters on September 8, 2017, with a shoot scheduled for this summer.
The immediate question everyone was asking is what this means for Will Poulter, who had been cast as Pennywise when Cary Fukunaga was attached to direct.
Variety is reporting that Poulter has since dropped out, due to scheduling conflicts, while our own sources tell us that he’s still in contention as Mama director Andy Muschietti will hold his own auditions.
Poulter (The Maze Runner, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader) was still in the mix for the role of Pennywise, the demonic clown, late last year:
“Will Poulter would be a great option. For me he is at the top of my list,” Muschietti firmed up.
“King described 50s’ terror iconography,” he added. “And I feel there’s a whole world now to rediscover, to update. There won’t be mummies, werewolves. Terrors are going to be a lot more surprising.”
In 1960, seven outcast kids known as “The Loser Club” fight an evil demon who poses as a child-killing clown. 30 years later, they are called back to fight the same clown again.
Fukunaga’s vision for It was to create two separate films, one which tackled the protagonists as children and the second film to focus on them as adults.
Movies
‘Backrooms’ Director Kane Parsons Is No Fan of Generative AI: “Defeats the Purpose Entirely for Me”
There has been a lot of talk recently about filmmakers embracing generative AI as part of the filmmaking process, from Darren Aronofsky to Martin Scorsese. But what about filmmakers that are against the use of Gen AI for creative pursuits? You can count 20-year-old Backrooms director Kane Parsons among that group, which should give you some hope for the future.
In a new chat with The Australian, the self-taught young filmmaker makes it crystal clear that he won’t be using generative AI in any of his upcoming filmmaking projects.
“I think I’m in the same boat as most well-adjusted people,” Parsons tells the outlet. “If I could snap my fingers and make generative AI disappear forever, I probably would. Creatively, I get no enjoyment from using those tools. It defeats the purpose entirely for me.”
“What interests me more is interrogating it artistically,” Parsons notes. “We already live in a world where you walk outside and there are billboards and signs that are obvious AI slop. That’s become part of our visual reality. To me, generative AI feels less like innovation than a symptom of a broader cultural and economic rot.”
He explains, “I’m interested in using that iconography in art – not using AI to make the art itself, but examining what it represents. I definitely want to explore it further in future projects.”
Kane Parsons also notes during the interview with The Australian, “… there’s so much at stake and so many genuinely harmful consequences already happening.”
Backrooms marks young prodigy Kane Parsons’ feature directorial debut, and it’s based on his own series of YouTube videos that were brought to life using Blender, the open-source 3D computer graphics software suite. So it’s no surprise that Parsons, who has hand-made his filmmaking career up to this point, isn’t buying into the hoopla around Generative AI.
His debut feature is the #1 movie in the world, so perhaps he’s onto something.
What’s next from Kane Parsons, you ask? Stay tuned…
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