Even before director Cary Fukunaga became the bees knees of the town with his work on all eight episodes of the first season of True Detective, he was attached to helm Stephen King's epic novel It for producer Dan Lin and New Line Cinema.  And now it looks like he's close to the starting line after several years of development.

For those of you who haven't read the book, it weighs in at over a thousand pages and is centered around a group of children haunted by a menacing force in the fictional town of Derry, Maine. Eventually (most of) the kids grow up, only to find that the evil isn't quite done with them.  The book is very heavy on character, so even though the plan to split the feature adaptation into two films isn't new, I'm glad it's still in place.  Hit the jump for more on Cary Fukunaga shooting It this coming summer.

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Producer Dan Lin told Vulture that the project is finally picking up steam and will likely enter pre-production in the fall:

 “The idea is to start official prep in March for a summer shoot.  Cary likes to develop things for a while, and we’ve been with this for about three or four years, so we’re super excited that he stayed with it. You guys are gonna be really excited.”

Lin also spoke not only about the plan to split the book into two films, but the fact that Stephen King has read the script, written by Fukunaga and Chase Palmer, and is thrilled with it:

"The most important thing is that Stephen King gave us his blessing.  We didn’t want to make this unless he felt it was the right way to go, and when we sent him the script, the response that Cary got back was, ‘Go with God, please! This is the version the studio should make.’ So that was really gratifying.”

As much as I love Tim Curry's take on Pennywise from the original TV movie, I have very little doubt that this feature will trump that production in every other regard.

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Image via ABC