Steven Spielberg is about as legendary as filmmakers get, and that’s something that should be emphasized right away, before things get a little negative. He’s made a few dozen movies, as a director, across a career that’s lasted more than half a century, and he remains active, as of 2026, with the (currently) upcoming Disclosure Day being one of many blockbuster-scale movies he’s made. It would be great if that movie were great, of course, but it almost doesn’t matter, in the overall scheme of things, because Spielberg’s always going to be a legend because of what he’s already done. Some of the most beloved, enduring, and popular American movies of all time were directed by him (see Jaws, Raiders of the Lost Ark, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, and Jurassic Park, for starters), and he’s also taken on a few films of a more serious nature that are remarkable, and not necessarily the kind of blockbuster fare that he’s most celebrated for, like Schindler’s List, Saving Private Ryan, and Munich.

IT is that Stephen King book about a scary clown fighting a bunch of kids, except there’s also a lot more to it than that. The clown is actually a shape-shifting entity that emerges every 27 years to do horrific things, and the clown is, furthermore, just one of the appearances it takes on while terrorizing the people of Derry. But the image of a particularly scary (or at least scarier than usual) clown and a gang of young heroes endures, maybe thanks to the miniseries and two-part movie adaptations of IT.