Out of the many, many well-known characters and faces set to return to the big screen this year, one of the most unexpected and anticipated is that of Pennywise the Clown from Stephen King's terrifying, beloved received the stamp of approval from none other than Stephen King himself. That's something that, as fans of the critically-acclaimed novelist are aware, isn't easy to come by either.
trailer was released online earlier this week, mostly to positive reactions from both diehard IT fans and casual moviegoers who might not be as well-versed in the story of Derry, Maine. But it looks like, with several months to go until it actually hits theaters still, IT has already managed to acquire the kind of online hype for itself that just isn't very easy to come by.
previously held the title for most views in 24 hours with 139 million. That means it scored almost 60 million more viewers than that trailer did in that time frame, and completely smoked all of the other previous record holders, including Beauty and the Beast (127.6 million), Fifty Shades Darker (114 million), and Star Wars: The Force Awakens (112 million).
Aside from just the positive hype surrounding the new remake, these numbers are no doubt in part thanks to the excellent social media marketing strategies for it on behalf of New Line and Warner Bros. The trailer became a trending topic on Facebook and Twitter, landed at the top of the Reddit homepage, and even found its way to the Number 1 spot on the YouTube homepage. And in case that wasn't enough, the report states that 81 million of the views and over 1.8 million of the shares came just from its U.S. Facebook instances.
So with the combined positive hype behind it and the recognizability of the property itself, IT is currently setting itself up to be one of the most-anticipated studio releases of the back half of this year. Considering the initial announcement of the remake was met with lukewarm reactions from Stephen King fans, that's certainly not a bad thing. Now, it's just up to IT to find a way to, hopefully, live up to these rather high expectations.
Source: Deadline
