8 Things IT Chapter 2 Must Do To Succeed

7. Stick To A September Release Window

Stephen King's IT 2017 Movie Poster
Warner Bros.

On its opening weekend, Chapter One made over $123 million domestically - a staggering figure that blew away projections of $50 - $80 million and became the third-highest opening weekend gross of the year, beating out the likes of Spider-Man: Homecoming and Wonder Woman.

The movie is a phenomenon - nobody saw it coming, and the reason for this success is, mostly, the release date Warner Bros set for it. Having it open in September with basically no competition (especially after a surprisingly quiet August), was a genius move, and one that Chapter Two should replicate.

Because, make no mistake, if Chapter One had opened in May, June or July - i.e. a prime summer date - it would have made an amount closer to the above projections. If it opened this coming October, November or December and was surrounded by Thor: Ragnarok, Justice League, Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Jumanji and Coco, the same would be true.

There's a possibility that, after seeing how popular Chapter One has become, Warner Bros choose to place the sequel in one of these more crowded months - but that would be a mistake.

Chapter One is getting all this attention, praise and money because there's nothing else out right now that's worth talking about, and the September release date turned what could have been 'just another summer movie' into a cultural event.

Contributor
Contributor

Danny has been with WhatCulture for over ten years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. In 2022, he took charge of WhoCulture and has grown it into the biggest Doctor Who channel on YouTube, and one of the biggest Doctor Who communities on the web full-stop. He has been writing and video editing since his early teens, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers, off the back of a burning obsession with the Matt Smith era of the show. Like many his age, he first got into Doctor Who with the 2005 revival, but has since gone back and fallen in love with the classic years too. If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order, or to give you a random factoid about the making of Gridlock, Danny is the person to ask!