Movies
Here’s Why Bill Skarsgard Was Cast as Pennywise in ‘IT’
Much like the abysmal A Nightmare On Elm Street remake, New Line Cinema’s new adaptation of IT is going to either sink or float up from the sewers based on the antagonist’s performance. Much like Freddy Krueger stalked the kids of Springwood, Pennywise will do the same in Derry, Maine. Outside of finding a director, casting Pennywise would be the hardest decision in bringing the Stephen King story back to life.
Variety caught up with Andres Muschietti, who landed the lauded gig of handling not one but two IT films. The first task, casting the perfect Pennywise. Bill Skarsgard would eventually land the role, with the first trailers proving that he was a damn fine choice.
“I wanted to stay true to the essence of the character,” explained Muschietti. “I knew that I didn’t want to go the road of Tim Curry [who played Pennywise in the TV miniseries]. Bill Skarsgard caught my attention. The character has a childish and sweet demeanor, but there’s something very off about him. Bill has that balance in him. He can be sweet and cute, but he can be pretty disturbing.”
While he didn’t stay in character when the camera stopped, they did “try to maintain distance between him and the kids.”
He continued: “We wanted to carry the impact of the encounters to when the cameras were rolling. The first scene where Bill interacted with the children, it was fun to see how the plan worked. The kids were really, really creeped out by Bill. He’s pretty intimidating because he’s six-four and has all this makeup.”
The kids in peril, the Losers’ Club, include Sophia Lillis, Jaeden Lieberher, Finn Wolfhard, Jack Dylan Grazer, Wyatt Oleff, Chosen Jacobs and Jeremy Ray Taylor.
Creature performer Javier Botet will play The Leper, and Nicholas Hamilton plays Henry Bowers. The cast also includes Owen Teague who plays Patrick Hocksetter, a bully who torment the Losers’ Club. Dan Lin, Roy Lee, Seth Grahame-Smith, David Katzenberg, and Barbara Muschietti produce.
The film will be in theaters September 8, 2017.
Before updating the video nasty Faces of Death, director Daniel Goldhaber and writer Isa Mazzei explored the dangers of online life in tech-thriller Cam, their feature debut that was acquired by Netflix in 2018 after making waves on the festival circuit.
At the end of last year, the Netflix exclusive quietly departed from the streaming platform, left without another streaming home.
It’s not an isolated story; Mike Flanagan’s Hush also left streaming entirely for a period until it was finally picked up on both physical media and other streaming services.
While the tech-thriller currently isn’t available to watch on Netflix, Tubi, Hulu, or any other platforms, that’s not a problem for Cam thanks to a very cool move by Goldhaber: the director has made his breakout film accessible to watch online for free via his website.
As his site notes: “CAM is unfortunately not currently available to view on any platforms, so you can watch it here if you like :).“
No subscriptions or fees necessary, just hit play.
Cam follows Alice (Madeline Brewer), who works as an online cam girl obsessed with her ranking on the cam site. The higher her ranking goes, the more it draws unwanted attention, and Alice soon finds herself replaced on her own show with a doppelganger.
Written by Mazzei, a former camgirl, it uses the horror thriller premise to examine the life of a sex worker; Alice’s career ambition is directly at odds with the shame it brings to her family, and how she tries to spare them from it by keeping them in the dark. It only compounds her danger when the doppelganger enters the equation in Goldhaber’s engaging thriller.
For a deep dive into the treacherous world of Cam, listen to Horror Queers’ episode on it now.
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