There’s a certain kind of Hollywood journalist who gets very, very excited by big box-office earnings. You can almost hear the panting as the probable first-weekend earnings, per-screen averages and total domestic grosses are reported. You could be forgiven, in fact, for presuming that the author owns stock in the distribution company behind the hit-to-be, and that a fat dividend check will soon be deposited in his/her account. If you’re that kind of trade reporter or tabulator, the projected earnings for Andres Muschietti and Stephen King‘s It — a first-weekend haul of at least $50 million, according to tracking — will do the trick.
Another way to feel the excitement is to feign indifference to grosses and just concentrate on the film, as I was doing a few months ago, and ask whether director Andres “Andy” Muschietti would deliver the same kind of carefully measured, less-is-more chills that Mama, his last film, had in spades.
Posted on 5.11.17: “Yes, it looks like a retread, a Stand By Me ensemble threatened by a demonic Clarabelle. But something tells me that It (9.8.17, Warner Bros., New Line) may be up to something good. I’m basing this suspicion partly on the last two-thirds of the new trailer, and partly on the fact that it might be Son of Mama. Or more preciselt Son of Mama meets Stephen King.