'It' filmmakers drop big hints about return of Pennywise, kid stars for 'Chapter 2'
As It continues its record-breaking box-office dominance, audiences are already jonesing for the sequel. We thought about investigating clown-infested some storm drains for some scoop about the upcoming Chapter 2, but we decided it might be a little less scary to ask the filmmakers instead.
Director Andy Muschietti and producer Barbara Muschietti came to Yahoo’s Los Angeles studios for a Facebook Live this week and dropped some information about the upcoming sequel they are currently developing with the first chapter’s co-screenwriter, Gary Dauberman.
“We still have Chapter 2 that Andy and Gary are working on,” Barbara Muschietti told us. “I think in the second part there is going to be a chance to bring some of the stuff that was left out of part one. Our intention is, of course, to do it as soon as possible. Andy wants to bring the kids [back] through flashbacks and in order to do that, it’s better if they don’t have beards.”
“We have an outline that we all like,” shared Andy Muschietti. This lines up with what we previously learned from an interview with Variety, in which the Mama director hoped to have a script completed by January.
Muschietti definitely wants the kids to be integral to the plot of the second movie. “My idea with the flashbacks is more like recovering that dialogue between the two timelines that we love so much from the book,” he explained to Yahoo. “And also playing with that preexisting emotional engagement with the [Losers’ Club] and their younger versions. It’s not just flashbacks, I want the summer of ’89 to play a main role in the main plot.”
In a previous interview with our friends at Yahoo Movies UK, Andy Muschietti shared that he wants sequel to incorporate a “transdimensional element” as featured in Stephen King’s novel. “Getting in to that other dimension — the other side — was something that we could introduce in the second part,” he said.
If you were a fan of Bill Skarsg?rd as Pennywise and wanted more creepy clown in your life, there’s some good news. “I want to expand the character a little bit more, I love the idea,” Andy Muschietti told us when asked if he would give Skarsg?rd more dialogue in the second movie. “The book is very much told from the perspective of the kids, so everything we know about the Monster is basically very speculative and shrouded in mystery and that’s one of the things that I love. Having said that, I think there is space and a margin to deepen the backstory of that monster, with the only purpose of making him more terrifying.”
As for some of the other characters, little has been sketched out with one big exception. Andy Muschietti had previously mentioned to Entertainment Weekly that Mike Hanlon (Chosen Jacobs), whose role as group historian was transferred to Ben Hanscom (Jeremy Ray Taylor) in the current film, will have a darker future than previously seen. “I want to make his character the one pivotal character who brings them all together, but staying in Derry took a toll with him,” he shared. “I want him to be a junkie actually. A librarian junkie. When the second movie starts, he’s a wreck.”
Watch: Andy Muschietti reveals his plans to release a director’s cut of It:
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