Will Poulter Is Your New Pennywise The Clown

There are some things you just shouldn't do, like wear a racist headdress to the Met Gala, or remake the 1990 classic Stephen King classic film miniseries, It. I am proud to share a birth year with the King adaptation starring the inimitable Tim Curry as Pennywise the Dancing Clown, the most common form that the shape-shifter It takes to terrorize the Losers Club — both when they're young and when they're older. And now, 25 years later, Cary Fukunaga is remaking It with New Line and we have a new Pennywise, even if we don't need or want one. Will Poulter will be playing Pennywise in the It remake, but the real question is whether or not the beloved King novel-turned-film-adaptation really needs a remake at all.

Our new young clown terror Poulter is only 22 years old, compared to Tim Curry's age of 44 when held the role in 1991. Poulter been in quite a few Hollywood blockbuster like We're The Millers, The Maze Runner, and The Chronicles Of Narnia: The Voyage Of The Dawn Treader. It's not that I have anything against him as a person or as an actor, nor do I have anything against Fukunaga. Clearly both love It as much as I do. I just hate to see my favorites being remade for the sake of a new Hollywood remake. Especially horror movies. Especially Stephen King classics.

Many Stephen King film adaptations are bad. Some are very bad. But some are so good that they are untouchable, somehow more sacred than other horror movie remakes. Remaking It is almost as egregious as remaking The Shining, both of which were basically perfect films. If your heart is really, truly set on remaking a Stephen King movie, there are so many bad ones to choose from and improve upon. For every Misery, Carrie and Shawshank Redemption, there's a Maximum Overdrive or a Needful Things. Or a Dreamcatcher. And if you have to ask "what was wrong with that one," then you will never know.

Fukunaga is supremely talented, so it would have been great to see him lend his talents to doing justice to any of those King stories on the screen. And it's not like there aren't hundreds, literally, of King's works that haven't yet been scripted and acted. The man has written more than 50 novels and 200 short stories, probably like 76 percent of which are set in Maine. Because Maine is spooktacular. If he can have that many original ideas, can't Hollywood have just one?

But maybe I'm jumping the gun here. While it's debatable if the remake will live up to the original, it will be nice to see an iconic character like Pennywise back on our screens once more. An entire generation of children need to be scared out of their minds of clowns again, after all, and everyone involved with the remake seems abundantly talented. I'll be making room in my DVR for this because, I mean, how could I not?

Images: sicklysaccharine, asillyhumansworld/Tumblr