why 1989?

Well, the original setting for the novel would have been 1956, if we're talking about the children, and 1960 in the miniseries, again, for the children. They set this version in 1989 so it'd be able to capture some of the 80's feelings and nostalgia movies always try to seem to get, and so 27 years later it'd be around 2016, which is sufficiently up to date that I doubt people in 2019 will be concerned it's 3 years behind current time.

Because hollywood thinks the masses are so freakin' dumb they can't "relate" to a movie unless it takes place RIGHT NOW.

They should have kept the 1950s setting of the novel. It would have been way more interesting.

In the book, the setting for the Losers adult fight against it is set in the present day, and the book was written in 1986 (if I recall correctly), and the book also covers the Losers as children 27 years previously, which at the time was the 1950s. It's like people who read the book then were old enough to be nostalgic for that time, so as the decades go by, to be relevant to today's audiences, the timelines have to shift decades too. That's how I can best describe it.

Put it this way: in the book, IT took the form of The Creature from the Black Lagoon (correct me if I'm wrong), so book readers back then would remember that famous movie monster. But these days? For people in this day and age, nostalgic about 27 years ago, it would've been the late 1980s, so people remember Nightmare on Elm Street and the movie monsters of that time.

See my point? I bet if they adapted IT once more, 50 years from now, it would have to portray that time and 27 years before it, and that time hasn't even come yet! Who knows what the culture of the time might be then?

Because Stranger Things, which is set in the early 1980s, is what renewed a lot of people's love of everything 80s and Stephen King as a pair, rather than as two separate things - and probably contributed to this re-adaptation getting the go ahead to be made. I can even see it being pitched to studio execs like so 'look, Stranger Things is popular, we'll just do that with IT, everyone will eat it up!' - and that's pretty much the truth.

The 50s setting wasn't about the target audience, it was just another example is Stephen King writing about what he knows. He was born in 47, so he was around the same age as the. Characters in the book at the same time. I don't really have a problem with the time period being changed because there wasn't much about the story that was really rooted in the 50s. Besides Richies love of monster movies.

why that year as opposed to setting it 1985 (present day setting of the novel) or 1986 (novels release) or 1990 (the tv miniseries) or even later in 1992 (so would tie in with Chapter 2s actual release year 27 years later in 2019)