'It' Sequel Gets An Official Release Date (So Hide Your Children)
Brace yourselves, Losers: Pennywise the Dancing Clown is coming back for more. Following the massive box office success of Andy Muschietti's feature film adaptation of It, New Line and Warner Bros. have announced that It: Chapter 2 will float into theaters on September 6, 2019 — just in time for the start of a new school year!
Details are sparse at the moment, but here's what we know about the It sequel: As promised at the end of It, the second chapter will pick up 27 years later, following the Losers' Club as they each make their way back to Derry to confront the fear-eating evil that lurks in the sewers once and for all. The sequel will also dig into some of the deeper mythology of the Stephen King novel.
Last month, Muschietti told MTV News that Chapter 2 wouldn't be as funny as its predecessor, so don't expect any New Kids on the Block jokes. "If the second movie happens," he said, "I really want to recover the dialogue between the two timelines that the book had."
In King's 1,138-page tome, the timelines — of the Losers' Club as kids in 1957 and when they return to Derry as adults in 1985 — are intertwined throughout the narrative. In Chapter 2, Muschietti would aim to do something similar, intercutting the events of the Losers as adults in 2016 with repressed memories from their childhoods in the 1980s. Of course book readers know that hidden in these repressed memories are the clues they need to defeat It for good.
Gary Dauberman, who was one of the writers on the first chapter, is set pen the sequel, and Muschietti, though not yet confirmed by the studio, is expected to return to helm the project. The young cast of It, including Finn Wolfhard and scene-stealer Sophia Lillis, will feasibly return to film Muschietti's proposed flashbacks. Bill Skarsgård will also reprise his terrifying turn as Pennywise the Dancing Clown, and he hopes to explore more of the character's metaphysical origins.
Speaking of, here's what Muschietti and the young stars of It had to say about Skarsgård's expert portrayal as evil incarnate below.