If moviegoers were waiting for a thumbs up from Stephen King before checking out the new big screen adaptation of his novel “It,” he just gave it.
“We blew the roof off the box office with IT over the weekend. Thanks to all of you who went out to see it,” the King of Horror tweeted.
King isn’t always so enthusiastic about his film adaptations — he famously despised Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of “The Shining,” for example. But “It” lived up to his vision.
We blew the roof off the box office with IT over the weekend. Thanks to all of you who went out to see it.
— Stephen King (@StephenKing) September 11, 2017
“It” scored a huge $123 million opening in the final box office tally, after the studio had initially estimated an opening of $117.2 million on Sunday. Not only did it score the third-largest opening weekend of 2017, it more than doubled the record set by “Hannibal” for the biggest horror movie opening of all-time.
Based on Stephen King’s famous novel (which also inspired the 1990 TV miniseries starring Tim Curry), “It” tells the story of several young misfits in small-town Derry, Maine, as they try to uncover the mysterious disappearance of several people.
They end up banding together to do battle with the evil Pennywise (Bill Skarsgard).
Jaeden Lieber, Finn Wolfhard and Sophia Lillis also star. Andres Muschietti directed from a script written by Chase Palmer, Cary Joji Fukunaga, and Gary Dauberman. Producers are Roy Lee, Dan Lin, Barbara Muschietti, Seth Grahame-Smith, and David Katzenberg.