In 1990, ABC aired a two-part miniseries for Stephen King’s best-selling novel IT. If you are old enough to remember its release, then you are old enough to remember that Tim Curry probably scared the bejesus out of you as Pennywise the clown.
Much like the novel itself, Pennywise returns 27 years later, this time as a big-budget theatrical adaptation of the gargantuan one-thousand-plus page novel. And if this teaser is indication, fans will “floating.”
Filmmaker Cary Fukunaga (HBO’s True Detective, Beasts of No Nation) boarded the project back in 2012 but bowed out over creative differences. Andrés Muschietti, director of Mama, signed on to film the adaptation in 2015 and has been using social media to tease the project with Instagram photos.
When children begin to disappear in the town of Derry, Maine, a group of young kids is faced with their biggest fears when they square off against an evil clown named Pennywise (played by Bill Skarsgård), whose history of murder and violence dates back for centuries.
Joining Skarsgård we have Midnight Special‘s Jaeden Lieberher, Jeremy Ray Taylor, Sophia Lillis, Finn Wolfhard (TV’s Stranger Things), Wyatt Oleff, Chosen Jacobs, Jack Dylan Grazer, and Nicholas Hamilton (Captain Fantastic).
Muschietti is directing IT from a screenplay adapted by Chase Palmer & Cary Fukunaga and Gary Dauberman. Dan Lin, Roy Lee, Seth Grahame-Smith, David Katzenberg and Barbara Muschietti are producing, with Marty P. Ewing, Doug Davison and Jon Silk serving as executive producers.
IT makes its arrival in theaters on September 8, 2017.
Bill Skarsgård has some big clown shoes to fill as Pennywise but that grin of his is creepy as hell.
