James McAvoy was just 15 when he first read Stephen King’s 1986 novel IT. However, he tells EW that he didn’t find it scary the first time around. Now as an adult he is starring as one of the main characters in a new age of the story. McAvoy joins Jessica Chastain, Bill Hader, Isaiah Mustafa, Jay Ryan, James Ransone, and Andy Bean star as the Losers club. And of course they will be up against the evil entity, Pennywise the clown, played by Bill Skarsgård. So what does McAvoy think of IT now as an adult? He says it gave him nightmares.
“When I reread IT as an adult for the film, I actually had nightmares about Pennywise in a way that I never did as a child…He’s writing about a small American town, he’s writing about death, he’s writing about growing old, growing up. And the movie is very much about that. You could argue the first movie is as much Stand by Me and Goonies and all those things as it is a horror movie.”
[Related] Andy Muschietti Confirms ‘It: Chapter Two’ has a Massive Runtime
“We were missing a vital story…”
Chapter Two, picks up 27 years after the Losers battled the clown and made the pact to return if Pennywise came back. So now Bill has grown and forgotten his childhood, the Losers and Pennywise. But one phone call brings everything crashing back into his memories. McAvoy says his character, who is now a screenwriter is “very lost and drifting through life.”
After the final trailer was revealed, fans got their first look at a new scene that wasn’t in the book. Bill follows a boy into a hall of mirrors in an attempt to save him from the clown. Director Andy Muschietti shot the sequence with practical effects and the scene will only feature a small amount of CGI. The scene was born from a conversation between Muschietti and McAvoy, over tequila. “We were missing a vital story beat for Bill where he dealt with his guilt that he caused his brother’s death. I said to Andy, ‘What can we do?’…and literally in 50 minutes, he invented a whole new sequence. It was never in the script, and it isn’t in the book. It’s brilliant.”
You can see James McAvoy and the rest of the Losers Club in IT: Chapter 2, in theaters September 6th. Check out the trailer below. What are you most excited to see in Chapter 2? Leave us a comment below and be sure to follow ScaryNerd for more of all things horror!
