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So What Happened to the ‘IT’ Director’s Cut We Were Promised?
Also, are we going to see Pennywise eat that baby or what?
Just yesterday, Warner Bros. Home Entertainment sent out an exciting press release. Andy Muschietti’s IT, the biggest horror hit of all time, will be available for digital rental on December 19, subsequently arriving on 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray Combo Pack/Blu-ray Combo Pack/DVD on January 9, 2018.
The forthcoming home video release of IT will include three featurettes and, most notably, eleven deleted & extended scenes that we did not see in theaters.
What will not be included, however, is the hotly anticipated Director’s Cut that Andy Muschietti himself recently promised. Just about a month ago, Andy and sister/producer Barbara Muschietti revealed those exciting plans to Yahoo.
“We’re gonna do a director’s cut,” Barbara told the outlet. Andy chimed in, “Probably there will be like… probably an extra 15 minutes… for hardcore fans.”
Mind you, those extra 15 (or so) minutes will likely be found within those eleven deleted/extended scenes headed home next year, but it’s a bummer to learn that the release will not be including a cut of the film with those scenes actually put back into it. We can’t help but wonder if WB plans to double dip, re-releasing the film as a Director’s Cut in the near future.
For now, we do have an idea what you can expect from the deleted scenes package. In the same chat with Yahoo, Andy Muschietti teased two deleted scenes in particular.
“There’s a great [deleted] scene… it’s a bit of a payoff of the Stanley Uris plot. The bar mitzvah,” Muschietti hinted. “He delivers a speech against all expectations in the room… he just goes on with a speech that is completely unexpected, basically blaming all the adults of Derry. And it has a great resolution.”
“There’s [also] a very funny bit in the quarry,” he continued, digging into another excised scene. “The quarry scene is extended. After the spitting contest… they’re on the cliff, the edge of the cliff… they’re having a spitting contest and they have to jump. And then Beverly shows up. We opened up that moment and we extended it, and there’s like… it escalates into something that is completely weird and… irrelevant to the scene… but it’s so funny. Jack Grazer, who plays Eddie, does something that is completely bonkers.”
Young star Jaeden Lieberher (Bill Denbrough) also recently teased an alternate final battle sequence that was shot but ultimately excised from the film.
“I did have this scene where I climb up the tower at the end. When I’m chasing after Georgie, I climb the tower and I’m at a one-on-one confrontation with Pennywise and then I say that I’m not afraid of him, that none of the losers are afraid of him, and that’s how we beat him,” he recalled. “But they took those lines and put toward the end, right after our big fight. So I had this whole thing where Bill Skarsgård is grabbing me and pushing me off the ledge, and I had to wear this harness. That was a more difficult scene.”
Of course, the most noteworthy deleted scene is one Bill Skarsgård recently described, noting that it was “really, really disturbing“: the “Pennywise eats a baby” scene.
“There was a scene we shot that was a flashback from the 1600s, before Pennywise [was Pennywise],” Skarsgård revealed. “The scene turned out really, really disturbing. And I’m not the clown. I look more like myself. It’s very disturbing, and sort of a backstory for what IT is, or where Pennywise came from.”
Presumably, we *will* be seeing these (and other) deleted scenes on January 9, but at this time we haven’t been able to unearth any information about a possible Director’s Cut.
We’ll continue digging and report back when we learn more.
Home Video
‘Hokum’ Heads Home to Digital Tomorrow Ahead of Physical Media Release in August
After scaring up a strong theatrical run, Oddity director Damian McCarthy’s Hokum heads home to Digital this week.
Settle in for a spooky supernatural chiller as Hokum arrives on all Digital platforms to rent or own beginning June 2, followed by a Blu-ray/4K Ultra HD Combo and DVD release on August 11, 2026.
Adam Scott (“Severance”) stars in Hokum as reclusive novelist Ohm Bauman. When he retreats to a remote Irish inn to scatter his parents’ ashes, the staff’s tales of an ancient witch haunting the honeymoon suite take hold of his mind. Disturbing visions and a shocking disappearance draw Ohm into a nightmarish confrontation with the darkest corners of his past.
Peter Coonan (“The Alienist: Angel of Darkness”), David Wilmot (“Station Eleven”), Florence Ordesh (“Departure”), Michael Patric (“Frontier”), Will O’Connell (“Game of Thrones”), Brendan Conroy (“Bodkin”), and Austin Amelio (“The Walking Dead”) also star.
Get a peek at the upcoming physical media release below, including a few special features.
Spooky Pictures’ Roy Lee (Weapons) & Steven Schneider (Insidious) produce alongside Image Nation’s Derek Dauchy (Late Night with the Devil), Tailored Film’s Ruth Treacy, Julianne Forde, & Mairtín de Barra, and Cweature Features’ Ken Kao & Josh Rosenbaum.
I wrote in my review for Bloody Disgusting, “A quaint Irish hotel with a deeply haunted history awaits an American writer in McCarthy’s third outing, continuing his streak for folkloric tales of supernatural karma and spine-tingling terror with a dark sense of humor.”
What’s next from Damian McCarthy? He’s currently writing a haunted house movie, but recent comments suggest he may be moving into other genres beyond that upcoming project.





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