Throughout most of the marketing campaign for the latest adaptation of Stephen King‘s IT, glimpses at Pennywise were kept to a minimum, with trailers and commercials opting to let the film speak for itself. Now that the film is in theaters, a new behind-the-scenes featurette sheds light on the character’s development, with footage of actor Bill Skarsgard on set being even creepier than what we saw in the film. You can check out the featurette above.
“Creating Pennywise with Bill Skarsgard was very fulfilling. He’s unpredictable and it was something that got my attention immediately,” director Andy Muschietti explains. “His body language and the madness in his look was completely unnerving.”
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As audience members, there’s no denying that Pennywise’s look on film was frightening, but with a variety of effects incorporated into the film, there was a certain level of detachment that prevented us from believing Pennywise was real.
Seeing behind-the-scenes footage of Pennywise, however, is almost more terrifying than what we saw on film, as we witnessed just how creepy Skarsgard looked each and every day on set, even without special cinematic effects.
“I wanted to create something unsettling,” Skarsgard confessed. “This feeling that you never know what’s going to happen when the clown’s around.”
Tim Curry portrayed the character in the 1990 adaptation of IT, becoming the go-to example of a creepy clown, a reputation Skarsgard had to live up to. Fans who have seen both versions of the story might have an actor preference, but Stephen King considers it a stalemate.
“Pennywise is scary in the book, he needed to be scary in that miniseries, and he needs to be scary in the movie. And he is. They’re both good. I wouldn’t pick one above the other,” King confessed to Yahoo! Movies. “I would just say that Andy had more to work with in terms of modern technology and, for all I know, budget too. I’m sure he must have had more; I can’t remember what the miniseries cost — at one time I knew — but it wasn’t that much. It was a TV thing.”
IT is currently in theaters.
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