It looks like 2017 is going to be the year of Stephen King adaptations. Considering that the horror author has had many done in his name with some good and some bad, it looks like some of his best and well-known works are going to made into films. The first that is coming is The Dark Tower with Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey, and it is a planned trilogy that will be quite epic in scale. The second is It, which is also an epic, but more on a classic horror story level. This is what is known about The Dark Tower and It release date and news.

There is news about The Dark Tower, as CinemaBlend reports that the planned trilogy is filming. This actually answers questions about The Dark Tower adaptation that many have had. If you are not familiar with it, it is a series of eight books that King wanted to be his magnum opus. It is strange to see the story being compacted into three movies, and one can’t help but wonder what is the plan.

After all, are they filming all three films at once, like The Lord of the Rings, or filming one film, hope that it is a hit, and then wait to film the other two? This really is a problem when you have to deal with connected universes and whatnot.

Fans will have some kind of first look at Entertainment Weekly’s PopFest from October 29th and 30th, and hopefully that will be some kind of big huge shot in the arm as far as publicity for this movie is concerned.

Then there is another Stephen King film coming out, and it is It. That is, this is the title of the film, and it is essentially a remake. It is an adaptation of a very long book from King (over 1,000 pages), and it was made into a TV mini-series back in 1990. Back in that mini-series, the main villain was a child killing clown played by Tim Curry.

What you are seeing here is a photo of the new Pennywise the Clown, who is played by Bill Skarsgard. If you are not familiar with the story, Pennywise is this demonic entity who hibernates for decades, but awakes to kill children. The story is about a group of kids from the fifties who stopped the killer clown, only to have to reunite in the eighties to stop him once again.

What isn’t known is whether or not the new version of It will take place in the fifties or eighties as some period piece, or perhaps the script will go into an entirely different direction. The clown costume is perhaps a modernized update of the scary clown costume.

The first of these Stephen King adaptations to be released is The Dark Tower, showing up on February 17, 2017. As far as It is concerned, it is coming out on September 8, 2017.