First Look at the New Pennywise from Stephen King’s IT

As production chugs along on Stephen King’s IT, EW has revealed the first official look at Bill Skarsgard as Pennywise the Dancing Clown! Check it out in the gallery below!

“It’s such an extreme character. Inhumane,” Skarsgård tells the outlet. “It’s beyond even a sociopath, because he’s not even human. He’s not even a clown. I’m playing just one of the beings It creates…It truly enjoys the shape of the clown Pennywise, and enjoys the game and the hunt. What’s funny to this evil entity might not be funny to everyone else. But he thinks it’s funny.”

EW also reports that the events of the film will be moved upward from the source material, which was set in both the 1950s and 1980s, and will be set in the present day with the late 1980s as the past setting.

Mama director Andy Muschietti will direct the film which will feature Jaeden Lieberher (Midnight Special) as Bill Denbrough, Finn Wolfhard (“Stranger Things”) as Richie Tozier, newcomer Sophia Lillis as Beverly Marsh, Jack Dylan Grazer (Tales of Halloween) as Stan Uris, Wyatt Oleff (Guardians of the Galaxy) as Eddie Kaspbrak, Chosen Jacobs (“Hawaii Five-0”) as Mike Hanlon and Jeremy Ray Taylor (42) as Ben Hanscom, the younger versions of the story’s protagonists.

Based on the novel by Stephen King, the film’s story recalls a promise made twenty-eight years ago that forces seven adults to reunite in Derry, Maine, where as teenagers they battled an evil creature that preyed on the city’s children. Unsure that their Losers Club had vanquished the creature all those years ago, the seven had vowed to return to Derry if IT should ever reappear. Now, children are being murdered again and their repressed memories of that summer return as they prepare to do battle with the monster lurking in Derry’s sewers once more.

The film is set to be released in two parts with Part One focusing on the group of teens called the Losers Club, while Part Two is set around the repercussions on these characters as adults. Stephen King’s IT Part One will be released on September 8, 2017.

The remake is being produced by Dan Lin, Roy Lee, Seth Grahame-Smith and David Katzenberg.

IT was previously adapted into a television miniseries in 1990 from director Tommy Lee Wallace and featured Tim Curry’s iconic performance as the title character. The feature film remake has been in-development for some time and was previously going to be directed by auteur Cary Fukunaga (Beasts of No Nation, True Detective) with the young English actor Will Poulter (We’re the Millers, The Maze Runner) originally cast as Pennywise.