Andy Muschietti, the director behind the latest adaptation of Stephen King’s IT, has unveiled a new look at the conception of the film’s iconic opening! He shared a storyboard from the opening on his Instagram account, which emphasizes a moment where Pennywise literally smells Georgie’s fear before biting into his arm.
It’s pretty interesting getting to see such an iconic scene drawn out and specified with eerie details like Pennywise smelling Georgie. It really makes you wonder just how far the actual opening could’ve went. Muschetti himself described the scene as “brutal”:
“…you have to know something, which is, maybe that you shouldn’t publish it, but in this story, there is no confirmation that Georgie is dead. He’s attacked by Pennywise, and he’s missing an arm, and he tries to get away from the sewer, like he’s dragged into it again, leaving a trail of blood, but his body is never found. And that’s what prompts Bill, that’s basically Bill’s motivation in the story, is finding Georgie alive.”
Personally, however, I’m more interested in the deleted baby-eating scene. Skarsgård himself commented on its disturbing quality:
“There was a scene we shot that was a flashback from the 1600s, before Pennywise [was Pennywise]. 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.”
In the film, a group of young kids face their biggest fears when they seek answers to the disappearance of children in their hometown of Derry, Maine. They square off against an evil clown named Pennywise, whose history of murder and violence dates back for centuries.
IT releases on home video on January 9, 2018 with digital video platforms releasing the film a month earlier on December 19 of this year.
Meanwhile IT: Chapter 2 hits theaters September 6, 2019.
What’d you think of the 2017 version of this scene? Be sure to tell us your thoughts in the comments!