Stephen King is set to scare us once again as ‘It Chapter Two’ returns to cinemas this week. Set 27 years after the last film, all the kids have grown up and most have moved away. Until Pennywise decides to make an appearance again.
The Basics
The run time is 2 hours 49 minutes.
Rated 15
Coming to UK cinemas on the 6th September 2019.
Filmed mostly in Canada and some bits in the USA.
Filming began in June 2018 and finished in October 2018.
The cast and crew
Directed by Andy Muschietti, who worked on the previous ‘It’ film and has also directed ‘Mama’.
The screenplay is by Gary Dauberman. He has written other films such as ‘The Cabin House’, ‘Annabelle’ and ‘Swamp Thing’.
The film features Bill Skarsgård who returns as Pennywise. Skarsgård has also been in ‘Atomic Blonde’ and ‘Assassination Nation’. It also stars Jessica Chastain and James McAvoy. Chastain has starred in films such as ‘X-Men’, ‘The Zookeeper’s Wife’ and ‘The Help’. McAvoy has also starred in ‘X-Men’, as well as ‘Split’ and ‘The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe’.
Bill Hader stars, best known for his appearances on ‘Saturday Night Live’ and films such as ‘Toy Story 4’ and ‘Trainwreck’.
Making the film
When asked who they would want to play their adult parts, Finn Wolfhard said Bill Hader, Sophia Lillis said Jessica Chastain, Chosen Jacobs said Chadwick Boseman, Jack Dylan Grazer said Jake Gyllenhaal, Wyatt Oleff said Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Jeremy Ray Taylor said Chris Pratt, Jaeden Martell said Christian Bale.
The first photo of the adult cast was released in July 2018.
Knowing Finn Wolfhard’s wish was to have him cast as his adult character, Hader was extremely flattered that he had wanted him to take the role. Hader also said it was hard for him to act scared as he usually smiles when nervous.
James McAvoy hurt himself while filming this movie and suffered a double thigh strain.
Bill Hader didn’t know that Bill Skarsgård could move his eyes in two different directions causing him to freak out when he saw it for the first time.
The kids from the previous film will be featured in flashback scenes even though this film is based on their adult selves.
Bill Skarsgård has said that making this film was a lot more fun this time around as he was able to hang out with the adult co-stars. In the previous film he was kept away from the young stars, so that they would be more frightened of him when filming.
With a run time of 2 hours 49 minutes, this is the longest horror movie ever.
Speaking about working with Stephen King, Muschietti said “He’s very respectful of adaptations.” He went on to say “”I really wanted to include him at least from an opinion standpoint. But he liked the first one so much and he liked the script of the second one so much that he didn’t really have much to change.” This seems to have been a much better relationship than the one Stephen King had with ‘The Shining’ director and writer Stanley Kubrick.
Xavier Dolan met with the director saying he would do anything to be a part of the movie. He later was cast as Adrian Mellon.
Jessica Chastain was the first person to be official cast in this film having been considered for it while the first film was still in production.
Bill Haden is a well known impressionist as seen from his work on SNL. The writer Gary Dauberman wrote a scene that had his character do an impression of Al Pacino knowing that Haden was good at it, plus his character was also able to do voices and impressions. However, Haden asked for the scene to be removed saying that he had done that impression too much.
Some of the young actors had to be de-aged as they had grown so much in the years since the last film in 2017.
Jess Weixler was pregnant while filming.
The director Muschietti revealed that the film cost around $60-$70 million.
Speaking about a potential third film, Chastain said it won’t have her or the director in it. She said there wouldn’t be another film as Stephen King hadn’t written another book.
Other facts
Parents in Australia petitioned to have the promotional posters removed/banned as they were too scary.
James Ransone and Jeremy Ray Taylor share the same birthday
Wyatt Oleff celebrated his 15th birthday on set
Idris Elba expressed an interest in being a part of the movie.
Jessica Chastain and James McAvoy have starred together in ‘X-Men’.
Jay Ryan actually worked as a clown before becoming an actor.
Chastain and Weixler are best friends in real life.
Stephen King is the most successful American writer in history.
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