After several terrifying trailers, horror fans are gearing up to see IT CHAPTER TWO when it debuts this fall. If new comments from the film’s director are any indication, it sounds like viewers should be ready for the long haul. According to a new report from Digital Spy, Andy Muschietti recently confirmed that the current cut of the film is clocking in at 2 hours and 45 minutes. As Muschietti revealed, that varies pretty wildly from the earliest cut of the film, which clocked in at 4 hours.
Videos by ComicBook.com
“A movie is very different when you’re writing the script and you’re building a story compared to what the final product is,” Muschietti explained. “At the beginning, when you’re writing and building the beats of the story, everything that you put in there seems very essential to the story. However, when you have the movie finally edited and it’s 4 hours long, you realize that some of the events and some of the beats can be easily lifted but the essence of the story remains intact.
“You cannot deliver a 4-hour movie because people will start to feel uncomfortable – no matter what they see – but we ended up having a movie that is 2 hours and 45 minutes, and the pacing is very good,” Muschietti added. “Nobody who’s seen the movie has had any complaint.”
While this runtime might seem a little daunting in theory (even after the over-3-hour release of Avengers: Endgame earlier this year), it places the film in a pretty interesting category in terms of mainstream movie releases. If this runtime ends up being the same by the time CHAPTER TWO hits theaters, it would make the film as long as The Dark Knight Rises and Boyhood, and a few minutes longer than both Avengers: Infinity War (2 hours and 40 minutes) and Avatar (2 hours and 42 minutes). By comparison, 2017’s It was exactly half an hour shorter, with a runtime of 2 hours and 15 minutes.
Of course, there’s still the nature of the original 4-hour cut of the movie, and what footage could potentially be left out of the theatrical release. As producer Barbara Muschietti reassured, that additional footage will definitely find its way to audiences, in the form of an eventual director’s cut.
“We will put out a director’s cut because this time it definitely merits it,” Barbara added. “We have some amazing scenes that didn’t make it into the movie. You have to make choices sometimes and some things cannot be in this theatrical release but are definitely worthy of people seeing them at a later date.”
What do you think of IT CHAPTER TWO‘s runtime? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below!
IT CHAPTER TWO lands in theaters on September 6th.
