On June 7, 2012, The Hollywood Reporter said that Cary Fukunaga was boarding the project as Director, and would co-write the script with Chase Palmer. The producers were now Roy Lee of Vertigo Entertainment, Dan Lin of Lin Pictures, and Seth Grahame-Smith and David Katzenberg of KatzSmith Productions. On May 21, 2014, Warner Bros. was announced to have moved the film to its New Line Cinema division, with overseer duties conducting by New Line's Walter Hamada and Dave Neustadter, along with Vice President of Production at Warner Bros., Niija Kuykendall. On December 5, 2014, in an interview with Vulture, Dan Lin announced that the first film would be a coming-of-age story about the children tormented by It, and the second will skip ahead in time as those same characters band together to continue the fight as adults. Lin also stated that Fukunaga was then only committed to directing the first film, though was currently closing a deal to co-write the second. Lin concluded by mentioning King, to which he remarked, "The most important thing is that [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." Lin confirmed that Fukunaga was set to begin principal photography in the summer of 2016.