Inside the Scary-Good Advertising That Made 'It' Such a Killer at the Box Office

Warner Bros. wasn't clowning around with its King adaptation

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It, the film adaptation of Stephen King’s best-selling 1986 novel of the same name, was an unexpectedly big hit at the box-office this weekend. Days before release, the smart money was on ticket sales of $50-60 million, which would have been totally respectable. The $123 million take that It pulled in was well above even the most aggressive expectations, leading to the widespread belief that Warner Bros./New Line will greenlight a sequel that adapts the second half of the book, where the kids from the first part have grown up but find Pennywise the clown isn’t yet defeated.

So, what lessons can we learn from the marketing of a movie about an ancient evil that takes the form of a clown with a red balloon?

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