The first It movie was as much a coming-of-age story about the real-world horrors of growing up as it was a spooky tale about a shape-shifting clown, and it appears as if that emotional core will be carried forward into the highly anticipated It: Chapter Two.
But don’t take that to mean there won’t be a healthy does of scares as well. In fact, we’ve already been told to expect something more terrifying than the first effort and it seems that Bill Skarsgård is bringing his A-game once again as the demonic clown Pennywise. At least, that’s according James McAvoy, who’s set to play Bill Denbrough and recently told GMA that he was seriously freaked out by his co-star while on set.
He’s amazing. The guy who plays the clown is terrifying. He’s a lovely guy, and yet he really freaked me out. I remember standing there with the rest of the cast, all these adults, and we’d all done weird, freaky stuff. And we are all looking at each other going, ‘I don’t like being here. I don’t like being an actor today.’ He really did, he really freaked me out. I never liked clowns as a kid.
Of course, it’s not like McAvoy would say anything bad about the work Skarsgård’s doing, but this is still encouraging to hear. In fact, if you ask Pennywise himself, Skarsgård’s explained in a past interview that he’s approaching the sequel with a newfound confidence.
“The first time I did it, nobody knew what I would do with it, so it was just all of this expectation,” Skarsgård elaborated. “I didn’t know if it would work, or if people would respond to it. There was a lot of that worry going on about it…I worked really closely with Andy. This time around, because the movie became such a phenomenon, it’s almost like I’m re-adapting myself.”
So, while writer Gary Dauberman has previously teased that the film’s ending will break our hearts, it also seems that fans have nothing to worry about as far as the horror goes, as It: Chapter Two seems to have all the right ingredients to make for another truly chilling watch.
