Stephen King’s novel IT is a massive tome weighing in at over 1,000 pages, so when it came time to adapt the epic for the big screen, the story was split into two parts that would play out over two films. Though one day we could see those two parts put back together into one massive film. That’s because IT Chapter Two director Andy Muschietti is open to a director’s cut that combines both movies, as he explained:
So many possibilities! As Andy Muschietti told SFX magazine, there’s the possibility for a version of the film that combines IT and IT Chapter Two into one director’s cut. This supercut, akin to Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair, would put the two films together into one massive movie that would give us the whole story of the Loser’s Club and Pennywise. What’s unclear is if such a director’s cut would just be the two films basically running one after the other or if it would all be re-edited.
The first film only featured the Loser’s Club as kids, whereas IT Chapter Two will show the adult Loser’s Club as well as have flashbacks to their younger years. So I wonder if all the flashbacks would be integrated into the first half of the film, or if this supercut would alternate between the two timelines as the novel does. Regardless, it would surely be long and have a runtime that lives up to the book’s page count.
The first film from 2017 is 2 hours and 15 minutes and the upcoming IT Chapter Two is a bladder-busting 2 hours and 45 minutes, a runtime Andy Muschietti has defended as necessary. If you add those up, you get a whopping 5-hour movie. That’s substantially longer than the 3 hour and 12 minute mini-series starring Tim Curry from 1990. And those are just the theatrical cuts!
Andy Muschietti also mentioned the possibility of special director’s cuts of IT and IT Chapter Two, which would presumably be longer than the theatrical cuts. His original cut of IT Chapter Two alone was four hours and he has plans to use that as a starting point to edit his extended, director’s cut of that film, a cut that he encouragingly says is “definitely going to happen.”
It’s not entirely clear from his statement if the supercut that combines Chapter One and Chapter Two would just use the theatrical material or if it would also draw from the special director’s cuts, but I tend to think the latter. Once you’re over 4 hours, you might as well put in everything you want. Frankly, it sounds like IT could get the Lord of the Rings Extended Edition type treatment and while longer isn’t necessarily better, I’d love for us to get the chance to judge for ourselves.
Andy Muschietti seems excited and bullish on these alternate versions of the film and given how much the first movie made and how much the second movie is tracking at, it would be smart to put out as many versions of this film as possible. We’ll have to wait a while to see what happens, but with any luck, when IT Chapter Two arrives on home video we’ll get a director’s cut of the two movies as well as a box set with a supercut of the entire story.
First it has to hit theaters though and IT Chapter Two opens on September 6. Check out our 2019 Release Schedule to keep track of all the big movies floating to the big screen the rest of this year.