Stephen King

Marketing for big-budget blockbusters has become so predictable that you can now mark the passage of time between any given month and a film’s release date by the number of TV spots and featurettes you’ve seen. Despite a handful of early viral promotions, Sony’s approach to marketing The Dark Tower has been fairly unusual in comparison to how other studios typically handle films of similar size and budget. That they didn’t release a trailer (or even a proper teaser) for such a highly-anticipated blockbuster until today, just three months out from release, seemed strange — to say the least. And yet that delayed marketing tactic feels more like a teachable moment than a cautionary tale.

By this point in a big film’s marketing cycle, we typically would have seen a couple trailers, a ton of posters, lengthy magazine pieces, the works. In contrast, there has been so little concrete info out there on The Dark Tower, which opens in theaters in almost exactly three months, that some people (like, y’know, me) began to doubt whether the movie would open on time, or even if it existed at all.

Studio math might be one part proprietary data and one part alchemy, but here’s something I feel pretty confident saying: when your trailer sets the all-time record for most views in a day, you’re about to make some moolah. We all remember that the first teaser trailer for It had 197 million views in its first 24 hours online, shattering the previous (albeit short-lived) record of 139 million set by The Fate of the Furious. Those would be extraordinary numbers for any movie, but for an unapologetic horror film about a demon clown? Not even the most aggressive Warner Bros. projections could have predicted that.

As if Stephen King hadn’t already taken over your TV, The Mist is starting to roll in. Spike’s ten-episode adaptation of the iconic tale gets a first full trailer with a re-imagined premise, ahead of a June premiere.

There are two groups who are going to feel personally victimized about the new It movie: young children, because Pennywise eats them, and real-life professional clowns. It’s no secret that most people are afraid of clowns — that’s the whole reason Pennywise appears as a clown in Stephen King’s novel in the first place. But folks who make their living as clowns are afraid the new movie will only exacerbate those fears and make it much more difficult to land grade school birthday party gigs.

Horror fans have been waiting for months. Stephen King fans have been waiting for years. And after a week of teasers and sneak peeks, the first trailer for It, Andres Muschietti’s highly-anticipated adaptation of King’s classic horror novel (or one half of it, anyway) is finally here to give us our best look yet at that divisive new take on the iconic evil clown. Beep beep, we’re all gonna float.

After a somewhat tumultuous development stage, the new adaptation of Stephen King’s classic horror novel It is finally heading to the big screen in September, courtesy of Mama director Andy Muschietti. While we wait for the first trailer (which may be arriving sooner than you think), a new photo of Pennywise the clown has debuted online, giving us another look at the iconic villain in a scene that fans of King’s novel and the original miniseries adaptation will immediately recognize.

Ever since the now-infamous photo of Pennywise the evil homicidal clown peeking out of a drainpipe surfaced online, fans of Stephen King’s seminal horror novel It have been concerned about Seth Graeme-Smith‘s upcoming film adaptation. There was fair cause for worry, too; it looked as if light was coming from several different sources, like a hasty photoshop job one might find on the box art for some direct-to-DVD cash grab. The only person who could really set the It devotees at ease would be Stephen King, who has seen dozens upon dozens of his works make the jump to the silver screen. And it would appear that he’s now done just that.

Stephen King fans know the number 237 from its appearance in The Shining, where it was the room number of a particularly dangerous corner of the Overlook Hotel. But did you know 237 also appears in the film adaptation of Stephen King’s The Shawshank Redemption. Morgan Freeman’s Red resides in Cell #237 in the Shawshank Prison. That’s just one of the facts featured in the newest episode of You Think You Know Movies!

If you’ve read Stephen King’s It, then the idea of a film adaptation that isn’t rated R sounds preposterous — and yet, it happened before with the 1990 television miniseries (which does not hold up, by the way). For those concerned that the new adaptation from director Andres Muschietti might forgo the R rating in favor of courting a wider audience, the producer of the upcoming film has laid those worries to rest while also confirming that Warner Bros. has every intention of making a sequel.

The tower is always darkest before its release date.

“You know the one where Michael Jackson dresses up as an old white guy and dances in a haunted house?” is a thing I’ve said to countless people about the short film Ghosts. But every time I mention the Michael Jackson and Stephen King collaboration, no one knows what I’m talking about. That’s right, the King of Pop and the master of horror made a short film together in 1996. While the film may have 14 million views on YouTube, I’ve only met one other person who can slightly recall the movie. In honor of Halloween, I’m looking back on the 15-year-old movie and trying to figure out why it’s been forgotten.