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Stephen King's 'It' Shatters Box Office Records On Release

Stephen King's 'It' Shatters Box Office Records On Release

Film of the year?

Michael Minay

Michael Minay

Stephen King's It was released on Friday after months of build-up, and has become an instant smash hit.

The horror film, which centres around Pennywise the clown - a shapeshifting entity which is millions of years old and terrorises children by exploiting their fears and phobias - has been hailed a great success.

In fact, it's cheered up a lot of gloomy cinema companies after the worst summer box office on record in 25 years.

It has scored an 87 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, has an audience score of 90 percent and a Cinemascore rating of B+ - which is very good for a horror movie.

The film has raked in $123m (£93.3m) dollars on it's opening weekend, smashing records for a film released between May and November.

The Stephen King adaptation is set to have the second-biggest weekend ever for an R-rated movie (a UK equivalent of a 15 rating), with only Deadpool likely to have done better.

Credit: PA

Further to that, it's the best opening weekend for a horror movie, with Paranormal falling into second place and that made $52m (£39m).

It has completed this feat even in the midst of Hurricanes Harvey and Irma which have battered parts of southern America.

This also goes to show, once more, that you don't have to throw the big bucks at a movie in order to see big rewards. It only cost $35m (£26.5m) - so has managed to triple the budget after just three nights.

Credit: Warner Bros

As if there weren't enough big-headed stats thrown in there for good measure, another new release also occurred this weekend: Reese Witherspoon's Home Again.

At a cost of $15m (£11.4m), it only made $8.3m (£6.29m) on the opening weekend.

The horror movie, It, is being screened in cinemas worldwide, and many who go to watch it are dressing up as clowns (and freaking people out in the process).

The Alamo Draft House in Austin, Texas, was hosting a clown-only screening of the Andres Muschietti-directed film - and many others just chose to take matters into their own hands.

The film is also likely to get a sequel too. Muschietti told Variety that work will get underway next year: "We'll probably have a script for the second part in January. Ideally, we would start prep in March. Part one is only about the kids. Part two is about these characters 30 years later as adults, with flashbacks to 1989 when they were kids."

Is it a bit early to begin the hype?

Featured Image Credit: Warner Bros

Topics: Clown, IT, TV and Film, Stephen King

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