There’s been a lot of chatter online about the runtime of IT: Chapter Two, the sequel to 2017’s horror smash IT.

Where most horror films are generally around 90 minutes long, IT: Chapter Two clocks in at 169 minutes. It’s a huge movie with epic scope, but one that keeps you gripped every second of its near three hour span.

It’s the concluding part of a story that spans 27 years for its characters - the gang of friends who call themselves the Losers Club - and millennia for their antagonist Pennywise, the evil presence that haunts their hometown of Derry. In our minds an epic story deserves an epic conclusion (hello Return of the King) and this delivers one in spades, with very few scenes feeling superfluous to the story.

A completely faithful adaptation of Stephen King’s massive 1,100 page 1986 novel of the same name could have been even longer, and Andy Muschietti and Barbara Muschietti - the filmmaking couple who directed and produced the film respectively - say an extended version is very much on the cards.

Read more: Clown-only IT screenings planned

Whether it will take the form of a cinematic re-release, an extended edition Blu-ray release, or a supercut of both films together with new footage as Andy Muschietti has previously teased, is unclear, but both insist: it’s happening.

“In one shape or the other, we definitely will [see an extended version of IT: Chapter Two],” Barbara Muschietti tells Yahoo Movies UK.

“We just don't know what the shape is yet. It's not only about [us] desiring it, but we have a lot of pretty surreal stuff to untangle on that. So we'll see.’

One thing we know for certain is that Maturin - Pennywise’s cosmic space turtle foe who helps the Losers in the book - will make an appearance in the extended cut.

Read on to find out how the turtle fits in, learn about their plan to get the film into awards consideration, and how close to reality those The Flash rumours really are.

Yahoo Movies UK: I was amazed by how ambitious this film is - were you given fairly free rein by the studio to deliver your vision?

Andy Muschietti: No. It's as big as the story deserves. We were given the resources to make justice to it. So I had a bigger canvas to tell the story on. And of course, they give me a big canvas, and I want a bigger one.

Director Andy Muschietti (L) and producer Barbara Muschietti attend the "IT Chapter Two" European Premiere. (Eamonn M. McCormack/Getty Images) More

So it doesn't matter how much bigger the budget is, you're always reaching the limit [of it]. But I'm very happy with the result and the size and the scale of the movie. I think it really makes justice to the feel and the epicness the story.

Barbara Muschietti: It's not free rein anymore. No one gets free rein. You get support.

I was surprised faithful it was to Stephen King’s book. How did you decide what you wouldn’t include from the book and why it didn’t make the cut?

Andy Muschietti: When you understand that making a film adapted on a book is translating the story into a different language - where you need actually less elements - in the case of IT, it’s a huge story: much looser, interrupted constantly by interludes and flashbacks and much more subplots.

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