The horrors of Hollywood financing will mean the return of Pennywise the clown

The franchise is king in film – and early numbers suggest It could be the movie industry’s next moneymaker, writes James Moore

The chances are we’ll be seeing more of this classic villain (Warner Bros/AP)

It: Chapter Two has had, shall we say, mixed reviews. You can at least partly blame the business of moviemaking for that. The first outing for Pennywise, the world’s favourite frightening clown, was produced for just $35m (£28.4m) and went on to gross in excess of $700m, making it one of the most profitable films of 2017.

As a result, Chapter Two didn’t just get the go ahead. It got a much bigger budget, double the original according to director Andy Muschietti, with plenty more where that came from for marketing and promotion.

With all that extra money he made... not a stinker but a collection of great individual scenes without a coherent narrative behind them. An ok film that is arguably less than the sum of its parts. That is at least, one of the charges that has been laid at the door of the sequel.