Prepare Yourself for an Even More Vicious Pennywise in IT: Chapter Two
In a little while we’ll be sharing the first trailer for Andy Muschietti’s IT: Chapter Two.
We already know that the second installment of Muschietti’s adaptation of Stephen King’s seminal novel required a possibly record-setting amount of blood. At least this was according to one of the film’s stars, Jessica Chastain, who plays the grown-up Beverly Marsh. Chastain appeared on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon this past March and shared some of the film’s bloody details.
“I’m going to say something, and I think I’m going to be in trouble, but I’m going to do it,” she said. “It might be a spoiler. But in the movie, there’s a scene that someone said on set that it’s the most blood that’s ever been in a horror film in a scene. And I’ll tell you, the next day I was like pulling blood out of my eyeballs.”
We’ll have a better sense of how Muschietti and his screenwriter Gary Dauberman tackled adapting the second half of King’s novel when the trailer arrives today. What know already, thanks to Entertainment Weekly, is that Pennywise himself, Bill Skarsgård, says the child murdering clown is somehow even more vicious in Chapter Two.
“The arc of the first movie is that he, for the first time, experiences fear himself. His last line—Fear—is him experiencing it for the first time, and he’s sort of shocked and perplexed and surprised. Like, what is this? He’s inflicted fear on his prey, and he’s very focused on fear, but he’s never experienced it himself. Now he’s experienced something that he has been inflicting on others and…there’s a shift leading into the second movie. It fuels hatred and anger towards the kids, who will be adults in this one, so I think there might be an even more vicious Pennywise. He’s really going after it”
Chapter Two revisits Derry, Maine, 27-years after Pennywise’s first taste of fear. The kids are now all grown, with James McAvoy stars as Bill, Jessica Chastain as Beverly, Bill Hader as Richie, Isaiah Mustafa as Mike, Jay Ryan as Ben, James Ransone as Eddie. Skarsgård told EW that Pennywise doesn’t have the same requirements that the passage of time requires of the kids. He’s a monster, after all.
“There’s a lot to explore. You can change him or make him whackier, but he’s not really bound to continuity in the sense that a normal character would be. We can explore his unpredictability now that we’ve established the character for the audience. We can still sort of shock them.”
IT: Chapter Two hits theaters on September 6th. The trailer arrives in about an hour.
Featured image: Bill Skarsgard in IT. Courtesy: Warner Bros. Pictures
