We're headed into the sewers looking for love as we begin our new miniseries "This Whole Thing Smacks of Gender," in which we look at the romance of Hollywood's finest pronoun-based films - and we're kicking off with Andy Muschietti's blockbuster 2017 adaptation of (half of) Stephen King's IT!

Join in as we discuss our own favorite King adaptations, Bill Skarsgard's performance as Pennywise the clown, the various versions of the movie that almost got made, and the film careers of Game of Thrones stars.

Plus: How does this film compare to the 1990 TV version? What was Pennywise doing before humans arrived in America? What's going on with that one scene everyone (wisely) refuses to adapt? And what was up with all those clown sightings in 2016?

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Next week: Them! (1954)

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Key sources and links for this episode:

• "Cary Fukunaga Offers New Details on Why IT Remake Fell Apart" (Variety)
• "IT, Stephen King Adaptation, is Top Horror Pre-Seller in History" (Variety)
• "How does the new IT movie deal with Stephen King's orgy scene?" (Vulture)
• "Stephen King: It's 'fascinating' people are more offended by IT's child orgy than its child murders" (Vulture)
• "How does the IT movie compare to Cary Fukunaga's script?" (Vulture)
• Cary Fukunaga and Chase Palmer's IT screenplay
• "Creepy clown hoaxes lead to 12 arrests in multiple states" (New York Times)
• "Prada Villains Runway Explained" (Yahoo!)
• "Global film industry shrugs off renewed Trump movie tariff threat" (Reuters)