You don’t have to look too hard in any given year to see a horror movie that grosses far more than its budget, but a movie like IT is rare. Unlike the micro-budget horror released by Blumhouse that goes on to make hundreds of millions of dollars, ITshows that you can make a polished horror adaptation and absolutely dominate at the box office (to the tune of $698 million worldwide).

Although there’s only one IT movie left on the schedule (IT: Chapter Two for September 2019), you better believes that Warner Bros. will be trying to find a way to create the “Pennywise Chronicles” or something like that where the clown terrorizes people through prequels, sequels, and beyond. Also, The Dark Toweraside, 2017 was a pretty successful year for Stephen King adaptations with the critical acclaim for Gerald’s Game and 1922, so it will be interesting to see how future adaptations of his work pan out.

6- Zack Snyder Leaves Justice League; Joss Whedon Steps In

Zack Snyder stepped away from Justice League earlier this year to deal with a family tragedy, and Warner Bros. brought in Joss Whedon to finish the movie. What we didn’t know at the time and what became clear over the course of the year is that “finishing” Justice League basically meant reshooting Justice League. And yet, at the end of the day, the movie that WB ended up with was neither fish nor fowl. It has elements of Snyder’s aesthetic mixed with Whedon’s comic vibe, and yet you can feel the studio mandate bearing down on the picture that it must be less than two hours, so new characters rarely get time to breathe.

The ramifications of Justice League probably won’t impact either Snyder or Whedon’s careers, but it’s certainly a heads up to Warner Bros. The movie that was supposed to be their answer to The Avengers struggled to make an impact at the box office, and its failure will likely reshape (yet again) how the studio chooses to approach its superhero slate. The superhero landscape has radically changed, and yet the failure of Justice League shows that the DCEU still hasn’t found its place.

7- Disney Buys 21st Century Fox

We don’t yet know how everything will shake out with the Disney/Fox deal, but it will undoubtedly change the media landscape as we know it. While some fans are eager at the possibility of Fox’s Marvel properties being able to join the MCU and A New Hope falling under Disney’s control, there are much larger issues at stake with regards to who controls the content you see and what content gets created.

Both Disney and Fox will be radically different in two years if this deal is approved. Disney will be massive, and yet how much more output can they create? What happens to Fox’s distribution arms like Fox Searchlight and studio output? And what happens to the Fox assets that remain in Rupert Murdoch’s control like Fox News, Fox Sports, and Fox Broadcasting? There will be many prognostications, but ultimately, it looks like power will be further consolidated under Disney and consumers will be left with fewer options.