'Here ... take it'

Stephen King's It outtake shows a very different opening scene

It (2017) type Movie

You’ve heard of alternate endings, but this is a sort of alternate beginning.

Anyone familiar with Stephen King’s It knows it starts with a scene that’s both heartbreaking and horrifying: Little Georgie Denbrough, sailing a paper boat down the gutter of his rainy street, discovering the surreal figure of a clown inside a corner storm drain.

What happens next is unspeakable. But in this outtake from the recent movie we see a very different encounter between Georgie and Pennywise the Dancing Clown.

In this alternate universe, the clown simply isn’t very good at scaring or devouring children.

It, directed by Andy Muschietti, makes its digital debut today and is out on Blu-ray Jan. 9.

Image zoom Warner Bros.

Bill Skarsgård, who plays Pennywise, said that during shooting they often kept this scene playful rather than scary because the actor playing Georgie, Jackson Robert Scott, was so young.

“There was a very big difference working with him as opposed to the other kid actors because they were early adolescent, you know 12 or 13, so they were closer to grown-up actors in terms of the working experience than they were to kids,” Skarsgård said. “But Jackson, he was a proper kid.”

Even so, this particular outtake didn’t ring a bell.

“Oh, that’s funny. I don’t even remember that,” Skarsgård said when this version was described. (It may be the result of some prankster editors, cleverly splicing several different outtakes.)

Or maybe the memory just mystically fades the further you get from Derry.

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