When movies are remade or rebooted (or re-told), the first film in most cases, sets the standard. In regards to the upcoming IT movie, Bill Skarsgard has some pretty big shoes to fill when it comes to playing Pennywise The Clown – a character Tim Curry made iconic.
Skarsgard, however, says there’s no need to compare the two:
“It was always important for me to reinvent It and reinterpret It in a different way. I sort of grew up with the Tim performance and I was very familiar with it and a huge fan as an actor, so my process of preparing for the role was, “okay this needs to be different” and I think we did that, I think this Pennywise is different and they can stand alone – there’s no need to compare them as you can appreciate both but it was important to me to do something new and something original with the take on the character.”
Yesterday, we were able to get Tim Curry’s thoughts on Skarsgard as Pennywise, and he had some pretty positive things to say:
“Well, I like [Bill] Skarsgard very much, I think he’s very clever. It’ll be interesting what sort of clown face he puts on, because it’s not an obvious clown face at all. I’ve seen the trailer and you can’t really see him at all. So I’m fascinated to see it. He’s very good.”
He also added:
“I hope they make the ending better because on [the TV version], I turned into some kind of giant spider and it was not very scary.”
In the end, it’s hard to disagree with what Skarsgard said. There’s really no need to compare the two – they can both stand alone.