Warner Bros. has been interested in a feature film adaptation of Stephen King's IT for quite some time. The difficulty has always been how to tackle the material, as the book is over 1000 pages long and they weren't interested in a 3-hour movie structured like the 1990 miniseries. We now have word on a director and writer who have been hired to turn the book into two feature films.
Cary Fukunaga (Jane Eyre) will be directing the films and will co-write the script with Chase Palmer, according to THR. Palmer was recently responsible for adapting Dune for Paramount, so he has experience in working on difficult-to-adapt material.
Roy Lee, Dan Lin, Seth Grahame-Smith and David Katzenberg are all on board as producers. Warner Bros. has also been looking into a number of other Stephen King adaptations, including The Stand and The Dark Tower. For those that haven't read the novel, here is the official plot synopsis:
"A promise made twenty-eight years ago calls seven adults to reunite in Derry, Maine, where as teenagers they battled an evil creature that preyed on the city's children. Unsure that their Losers Club had vanquished the creature all those years ago, the seven had vowed to return to Derry if IT should ever reappear. Now, children are being murdered again and their repressed memories of that summer return as they prepare to do battle with the monster lurking in Derry's sewers once more."