With Andy Muschietti and Gary Dauberman back behind the lens as director and screenwriter, respectively, not to mention the fact that the prolific Barbara Muschietti and Roy Lee have agreed to leverage producing duties between them, It: Chapter Two is fast beginning to fall into place.
Story-wise, those of you familiar with Stephen King’s horror opus will know that the sequel plans to whisk viewers back to the future – 2015, to be specific, by which point Eddie, Richie, Bill and Beverly Marsh will be fully-grown adults. The latter role has purportedly been earmarked for Jessica Chastain, while James McAvoy and Bill Hader will join her as Bill and Richie, respectively.
It’s shaping up to be an all-star cast – not that we’d expect anything less, mind you – and now, we’re being told that the pic is looking to seriously raise the stakes, with Muschietti revealing to ComicBook.com that it’ll be a scarier and more intense experience.
“They’re gonna find a lot of things that resemble the first one, the humor, the emotion, the horror. People are very invested emotionally in the characters of the story. At the end of the first one, there’s a promise of something else…It’s gonna be scarier. It’s gonna be a more intense experience. So, bring your adult diapers to the theater.”
Excited yet? We’ve also heard that Chapter Two will bring us closer to Pennywise’s cosmic origins. Often referred to as the Eater of Worlds, King’s shape-shifting demon has been stalking the sewers of Derry for eons, and Bill Skarsgård recently teased that the 2019 sequel will bring about some psychological horror, saying:
“The first movie worked so well at what it is trying to do, I think, and ultimately that is the kids’ story, and you follow these kids and you sort of fall in love with these kids. And the second one will be the adult story. And I think the right way to do it is to make that movie actively different. … I think there might be worth exploring sort of the psychological aspects of horror, but also maybe the sort of cosmological existence of this being. What is he, and where does he come from?”
Filming on It: Chapter Two is expected to begin this summer ahead of the pic’s release on September 6th, 2019. And as Skarsgård mentioned above, we can fully expect a deep dive into the cosmic origins of Stephen King’s abomination.
