By now, many of you have probably read that the Duffer Brothers’ show “Stranger Things” was rejected left and right before landing at Netflix and becoming the most talked about show of the summer. I’m guessing that pretty much every exec that turned down the offer is kicking themselves pretty hard right about now.
In an interesting interview with THR, the Duffer Brothers opened up that this wasn’t their first time with rejection. In fact, they’d previously wanted to try to do their own adaptation of Stephen King’s It, which is currently filming under the direction of Mama‘s Andy Muschietti.
“We asked, and that’s why we ended up doing this, because we’d asked Warner Brothers. I was like, “Please,” and they were like, “No.” This was before Cary Fukunaga. This was a long time ago,” Matt explains. His brother, Ross, elaborates, stating, “When we asked to do it was before, then he got on it afterwards because he’s established. So, he got on it and we were excited just because we’re huge fans of what he does, and one of the few people who hasn’t made a bad movie.”
However, they did have concerns. Ross worried about the run time, saying, ““How do you do ‘It’ in two hours? Even if you’re separating the kids, how do you do that right?” You don’t really fall in love with them the same way you’re going to when I read that book.”
Matt agrees, stating, “It’s like, “Could you be truer to the sensibilities of It if you had eight or ten hours?” We thought that you probably could more than if you were confined to two hours. At least that’s how we made ourselves feel better about not getting the movie adaptation. We still would have done it, obviously. I’m really excited about that movie. I think it will be cool.”
I feel like it’d be interesting to see the Duffer Brothers’ interpretation of It, especially now that we know they have a lot of talent in working with child actors who have to face monsters. However, Muschietti’s adaptation is going full steam ahead and I have a lot of faith in what he’s after. I mean, just look at Pennywise!
. Probably more cos I felt I got my money's worth...But maybe less because I could have watched it for free
