Before IT was the record-smashing, audience-scaring blockbuster we know it as today, the movie was tied up in all sorts of problems.

One of which included the departure of the movie's original director, Cary Fukunaga.

Citing creative differences with the movie studio, Fukunaga left the project after four years of development, which included two comprehensive script redrafts and a lot of changes to Stephen King's source material.

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As fans of the new movie will know, Andy Muschietti kept much more faithful to King's original story (bar the controversial kid orgy scene), leaving movie buffs to wonder just how different Fukunaga's IT would have been.

And – thanks to some (true) detective work by LowRes Wünderbred – we may finally have some answers.

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Following the True Detective director's departure, LowRes started work on a video series exploring what Fukunaga's IT would have been like.

The answer? Completely different.

Most notably, the video series explores two scripts written by Fukunaga and Chase Palmer, one in 2014 and another in 2015, which reveal exactly how disturbing Fukunaga's IT would have been and... honestly?

We're kind of glad it didn't get made.

Warner Bros.

LowRes claims that both the 2014 and 2015 script provided the template of a much more violent and bleak movie than Muschietti's adaptation.

"It had the body of Stephen King's IT, but not the spirit," comments LowRes on the 2014 script.

"It captured many of the darkest elements of the books and even expanded upon them, but failed to showcase the genuine camaraderie and friendship between the characters.

"They weren't so much pals as they were a battalion of child soldiers with a common enemy."

However, one change that got the video maker's approval in the 2015 script was Fukunaga cutting the character of Stanley (Wyatt Oleff), relieving the Losers' Club of a member before the movie even began.

And the differences in the 2015 script are substantial from there.

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According to LowRes, the 2015 script amps up the connotations of sexual abuse suffered by Beverly at the hands of her father Alvin (a theme hinted at in both Muschietti's movie and Stephen King's source material) with "lines that are suggestive enough to make your skin crawl".

This includes a flashback scene where Alvin meets IT as a child but it lets him live, purely so he can grow up and molest Beverly.

But, yep, that super disturbing nugget didn't make it into the final cut.

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The 2015 draft also includes a very disturbing scene where a mother in 1625 allows IT to devour her daughter in exchange for her safety, a "sequence entirely of Fukunaga's creation".

Nonetheless, like King's original and the Muschietti movie, both Fukunaga scripts ended with an explanation of IT's true form and origin.

So, who knows? Maybe all those sleepless nights would have been worth it.

IT is in cinemas now.

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