While much of what was on display in IT was of course taken direct from Stephen King’s novel, other elements weren’t found in the book or the 1990 mini-series.
Perhaps most notably in the deviations department, the titular monster at one point takes the form of a woman with a distorted face who literally emerges from a painting, inspired by Andy Muschietti’s own childhood fears of Amedeo Modigliani’s paintings – the same paintings that also inspired the villain in Mama.
“In my house, there was a print of a Modigliani painting that I found terrifying,” he described recently to New York Times. “And the thought of meeting an incarnation of the woman in it would drive me crazy.”
As it turns out, Muschietti’s terrifying new creation not only imparted nightmares on movie-goers around the world, but she even scared Stephen King himself!
Speaking with Collider, producer Barbara Muschietti relayed an e-mail King sent after seeing IT for the first time…
“It’s something that actually… Stephen King, the first email he sent to Andy when he had seen the movie… the one fear he wrote back… he said, ‘I fucking love the woman in the painting, it scared the shit out of me.’“
The woman, named Judith in the film’s credits, was played by Tatum Lee.
