In Stephen King’s It, an evil being has haunted the small town of Derry, Maine for generations, creeping out of the shadows every 27 years to terrorize and feed on the fear of its children. Mostly taking the form of a dancing clown, we watched in 2017 as the latest iteration of the Losers’ Club banded together to temporarily defeat that entity. And, as we all know, we’ll finally be getting round two in It: Chapter Two.
It almost goes without saying, but it seems a mere battle’s not what you want to win against Pennywise. You have to win the war.
Or at least that’s what Bill Skarsgard’s been hinting at. In a recent interview with EW, the 28-year-old star behind the clown teased that the shapeshifting villain’s only grown more dangerous since we last saw him.
“He’s scarier and he’s angrier,” Skarsgard announced. “There’s a couple of very brutal things in the film.”
Just as any schoolyard bully’d be who took the L against the local dork, Pennywise’s obviously quite bitter. Having admitted to feeling “fear” in his final line from 2017, it seems the clown’s been busy twisting and turning that fear into fuel, and the writers have been working just as hard.
Of course, we’d expect nothing less from the highly-anticipated sequel. Not only does part two of King’s original novel, in which the Losers reunite in Derry as adults, already bring more violence into the story, but the success of its predecessor’ll obviously play a part in director Andy Muschietti turning things up a notch.
For anyone who joined the craze two years ago, we know that It became one of, if not the biggest horror hits of the year. Ending its box office run with over $700 million worldwide, the surreal scares were like a giant lollipop for audiences.
But we’ll have to wait and see if the bloodier approach we’ve been promised works just as well once It: Chapter Two hits theaters on September 6th.
