The Stephen King adaptation that “traumatised an entire generation”, according to Stephen King
When you’ve written some of the most indelible horror stories of the last 50 years, created a multi-billion-dollar Hollywood empire, sold hundreds of millions of books, and become the most iconic figure in modern literary horror, you’re allowed to pat yourself on the back, and Stephen King does.
There’s nothing wrong with that, because somebody would have to travel very far to find anyone who doesn’t recognise his name or couldn’t rattle off at least a handful of his most famous novels off the top of their head. He’s become a one-man brand, and that pipeline doesn’t look as though it’ll ever stop.
Obviously, King couldn’t have imagined when he began his writing career that he’d become the industry’s go-to guy for adaptations, but what does he have that other authors don’t? Sure, plenty of scribes have seen a lot of their works brought to film and television, but he’s on another level with the Agatha Christies and William Shakespeares of the world, names that are never too far from screens big or small.
He’s written great books that became great movies, great books that became bad movies, bad books that became surprisingly decent movies, and bad books that became even worse movies. It’s a crapshoot, and if there’s one thing a writer who specialises in horror can wear as their proudest badge of honour, it’s scarring a generation for life and causing lingering trauma.
King has achieved that several times over, but he reserved special praise for one of his creations. When reflecting on the unprecedented success of Andy Muschietti’s It duology, which earned almost $1.2 billion in cinemas and spawned HBO’s prequel series, Welcome to Derry, the spine-chilling clown and demonic entity’s creator traced it all the way back to its live-action origins.
“What nobody counted on, least of all me, was the fact that an entire generation, now old enough to attend an R-rated film, had been traumatised as children by Tim Curry, who played Pennywise the Dancing Clown in an ABC-TV miniseries (budget: a measly $12 million),” he wrote for Literary Hub.
“That mini, directed by Tommy Lee Wallace, was a ratings and critical success, somehow skirting the unwritten TV censorship rule that stated, ‘Thou shalt not put thy characters under the age of 14 in mortal jeopardy,'” he explained. “Tim Curry was great as Pennywise, giving children across America (and perhaps the rest of the world) reason to fear the offer of a red balloon and the promise, ‘We all float down here.'”
It’s an interesting theory, and who better to posit it than the guy who literally wrote the book? King suggested that the audience who’d grown up checking under their bed for Tim Curry were eager to see a new version of the tale that traumatised them in their youth. Or, as he put it: “Hey, weird nostalgia is still nostalgia”. Whether that’s the reason for it or not, what can’t be argued is that Curry and his successor, Bill Skarsgård, are equally creepy as Pennywise.
