Cary Fukunaga's Original Concept for Stephen King's IT Movie Was More Like THE SHINING

Before Andy Muschietti jumped on board to direct the two-part film adaptation of Stephen King’s It, director Cary Fukunaga (No Time To Die, True Detective) was developing a different version of the film. He worked on the project for about four to five years, and he would have handled the source material a lot differently. In fact, he wanted his version of the movie to be more like The Shining in its tone, which would have been interesting.

While talking to THR, the filmmaker talked about his It movie and why it didn’t end up happening:

"I was on that for four or five years with Warners and then it got moved to New Line, right before we were about to go into production. I think New Line's view of what they wanted and my view of what I wanted were very different. I wanted to do a drama with horror elements, more like 'The Shining.' I think they wanted to do something more [pure horror] like 'Annabelle' [from the 'Conjuring' films]. That was essentially the disconnect."

While I enjoyed the two It films that Muschietti made, it’s hard not to be curious about what Fukunaga’s would have been like. I tend to like horror films with heavy drama elements, so I probably would have liked his film as well had he got to make it.

Fukunaga is a talented filmmaker, and maybe he’ll end up making a horror movie of his own at some point to show us what he would would do with the genre. I’d certainly love to see that!