IT was easily one of the biggest hits of this year, currently having grossed almost $500 million worldwide against a budget of $35 million. Naturally, a sequel has been planned, known as IT: Chapter 2 – and apparently, we now have a release date!
It should be noted that Warner Bros. have a majority stake in Rotten Tomatoes, so this seems to be pretty legit.
Not much is known about the second chapter, aside from this:
Even as New Line prepares for the Friday opening of its much anticipated adaptation of Stephen King’s It, the company is moving toward a second movie based on the massive horror novel. Gary Dauberman, one of the screenwriters on the new It, has quietly closed a deal to pen the screenplay for its sequel, and Andy Muschietti, who directed the new film, is waiting in the wings to return. Producers Barbara Muschietti, Roy Lee, Dan Lin, Seth Grahame-Smith and David Katzenberg are expected to return as well.
It’ll be interesting to see what they do with the second part, as Bill Skarsgård revealed they cut a pretty interesting Pennywise origin story out of the film:
“There was a scene we shot that was a flashback from the 1600s, before Pennywise [was Pennywise],” Skarsgard said. “The scene turned out really, really disturbing. And I’m not the clown. I look more like myself. It’s very disturbing, and sort of a backstory for what It is, or where Pennywise came from. That might be something worth exploring in the second one. The idea is the ‘It’ entity was dormant for thousands and thousands of years. The [flashback] scene hints on that.”
IT is currently playing in theaters everywhere.