Stephen King horror movie It breaks box office records

Stephen King’s film about a terrifying clown has defied expectations by topping the UK and US box offices and prompting Oscars talk.

It, the new movie based on King’s 1986 novel, took $123m (£93m) in the US over the weekend to become the biggest horror movie opening ever, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

It was also a global hit, raking in $62m (£46m) internationally, and topping the UK box office with takings of £9.8m.

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The Hollywood Reporter says the movie, about a group of misfit kids in the 1980s who battle a demonic, child-killing clown, “jolted the domestic box office back to life after seven straight down weekends and the worst summer in recent memory”.

“It came, It saw, It conquered,” says Variety. According to the website, It, rated R in the US, and 15 in the UK, scored the third-largest opening weekend of 2017.

“There’s something really special about the story itself, the way the movie was made, and the marketing,” said Warner Bros. distribution chief Jeff Goldstein on Sunday. “The stars aligned on this, and we still have some room to grow for the weekend.”

The movie was also a hit with many critics, who enjoyed the old-fashioned horror tale with heart.

“It’s a doozy,” says Peter Travers in Rolling Stone. The critic praises a “spectacularly scary” Bill Skarsgard, as killer clown Pennywise, and says that while the 1990 TV adaption was highly rated, this big-screen version “beats the pants off” of it.

It is “a crowd-pleasing frightfest”, says Travers. “You’ll scream bloody murder.”

In Salon, Matthew Rozsa says It made him experience “Proustian transport via an old-fashioned scary movie executed by a team of film-makers and actors at the top of their game”. The critic continues: “It needs to win Oscars. Like, all of the Oscars.”

That’s a tall order, admits Rozsa, because the Academy is “notoriously snobby” when it comes to recognising horror films. But, he argues, It “transcends the often schlock-laden genre” by merging “a poignant and realistic coming-of-age story with a scary horror film” to create one of the best films of 2017.

The new It film covers only the first part of King’s novel and leaves the story of what happens to the misfits up in the air. Given the movie’s box office success so far, there’s bound to be big audiences lining up for It: Chapter 2 when the sequel is released, in 2019.