It: Book vs. Movie
Andy Muschietti's 2017 film It adapts the childhood storyline from Stephen King's book. Seven friends in Derry face a creature that exploits their fears, with Bill Skarsgård playing Pennywise.
From Books Adapted
How much of the book it covers
One novel became two movies
The 2017 movie adapts the childhood story from It. It Chapter Two adapts the characters' return as adults, with flashbacks to their childhood. Both movies draw from the same novel.
King moves between the two periods throughout the book. He has described planning that back-and-forth structure around the children and the adults they become. The movies separate those stories and move them forward in time: the main childhood story shifts from 1958 to 1989, and the adult story from 1985 to 2016.
Welcome to Derry draws on history within the same book
It: Welcome to Derry is a prequel to the movies, rather than an adaptation of another King novel. Its starting point was the interludes in It, where Mike Hanlon records his research into earlier events in Derry.
Muschietti described those passages as an unfinished puzzle. The series develops that history into stories of its own, set before the Losers' childhood in the movies.
What changed from the book
Contains spoilersTap to show
The floating children were invented for the movie
When the Losers reach Pennywise's lair, they find Beverly suspended above the ground and dead children floating around a pile of toys. That image was director Andy Muschietti's addition.
Muschietti said he took the book's repeated references to floating and made them literal. He wanted an image of what Pennywise does to its victims without explaining the novel's wider cosmic mythology. The movie leaves out much of that explanation to keep the story with the children and what they can understand about the creature.
About the book and the movie
- Author
- Stephen King
- Year
- 1986
- Pages
- 1168Buy book
- Audiobook length
- 44 hr 55 minGet audiobook
- Narrator
- Steven Weber
A series of child murders brings seven outsiders together in Derry, Maine, where each encounters a creature that takes the shape of a private fear. Years later, a phone call summons the survivors back to the town they have largely forgotten. Moving between their childhood and adult lives, the book follows the friends as they recover the memories of what they faced and the promise they made.
- Director
- Andy Muschietti
- Writer
- Gary Dauberman, Chase Palmer, Cary Joji Fukunaga
- Year
- 2017
- Runtime
- 2 hr 15 minWatch on Amazon
- Cast
- Jaeden Martell, Jeremy Ray Taylor, Sophia Lillis, Finn Wolfhard
- Genre
- coming-of-age, contemporary fantasy, Fantasy, horror, Mystery, psychological thriller, supernatural, supernatural horror, Thriller
- IMDb
- View on IMDb
Bill Denbrough refuses to stop looking for his little brother after the boy vanishes near a storm drain. During a summer in Derry, he and six other children discover that the frightening things they have seen are connected to the same predatory presence. With adults unwilling or unable to help, the friends follow its trail beneath their town.
Other adaptations of this book
ItIt: Chapter Two · Movie · 2019Details
- Director
- Andy Muschietti
- Writer
- Gary Dauberman
- Year
- 2019
- Runtime
- 2 hr 49 min
- Cast
- James McAvoy, Jessica Chastain, Bill Hader, Bill Skarsgård
Mike Hanlon has stayed in Derry while his childhood friends build lives elsewhere, until a new killing convinces him that Pennywise has returned. He calls the former Losers' Club home to honor their old pact. Reuniting as adults means confronting memories they have suppressed and searching for a way to face the creature before it separates them again.
ItIt: Welcome to Derry · Series · 2025 · HBO, HBO MaxDetails
- Creator
- Andy Muschietti, Barbara Muschietti, Jason Fuchs
- Writer
- Barbara Muschietti, Brad Caleb Kane, Jason Fuchs, Andy Muschietti
- Year
- 2025
- Episode
- 1 hr 4 min
- Seasons
- 1
- Episodes
- 8
- Network
- HBO, HBO Max
- Cast
- Taylour Paige, Jovan Adepo, Chris Chalk, James Remar
In 1962, a child's disappearance draws a group of Derry schoolchildren toward something the town's adults refuse to acknowledge. Meanwhile, serviceman Leroy Hanlon becomes involved in a military operation whose interest in Derry goes beyond its air base. The two investigations unfold amid racial hostility and a recurring violence that has shaped the town for generations.
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