The blockbuster features a sobbing little boy having his arm ripped off by a monstrous clown.
It features children being terrified, tortured and killed and yet the most attention has focussed on the notorious sex scene from the original novel.
In the 1986 book, Beverly is just 14 but has sex with all the other, even younger, members of the Losers Club.
The scene was cut from the new movie but Stephen King has spoken out to defend and explain the controversial moment. He believes people are “more sensitive now” about such issues.
King told the Vulture: “It’s fascinating to me that there has been so much comment about that single sex scene and so little about the multiple child murders. That must mean something, but I’m not sure what.”
The author also explained exactly why he included the sex scene and how it is vital to the way the two storylines in the novel are linked.
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He said: “I wasn’t really thinking of the sexual aspect of it. The book dealt with childhood and adulthood…
“The grown ups don’t remember their childhood. None of us remember what we did as children. We think we do, but we don’t remember it as it really happened.
Intuitively, the Losers knew they had to be together again. The sexual act connected childhood and adulthood.”
“It’s another version of the glass tunnel that connects the children’s library and the adult library. Times have changed since I wrote that scene and there is now more sensitivity to those issues.”
While he is probably understating the case, it is almost inconceivable now that a new novel could include scenes with numerous underage childen having sex and not create a major alarm.
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