Jessica Chastain Pushed for IT CHAPTER TWO to Be “Carrie on Steroids”

There’s no questioning that IT CHAPTER TWO is one of the most anticipated horror movies of the year, if not one of the most anticipated movies for all of 2019. The first part of the cinematic Stephen King adaptation was a huge success for Warner Bros. Pictures, and they’ve assembled an all-star cast to play the Losers Club in the sequel.

But actress Jessica Chastain is known to push her projects even further, and IT CHAPTER TWO is no exception. The actress spoke at the Scare Diego event at San Diego Comic-Con and revealed that she wanted to take the new movie to the limit.

“I was like, ‘No, if we’re going to do it, let’s do it.’ I love horror films, I love Carrie, and I said, ‘Let’s make Carrie on steroids.’ And that’s what we did and it literally tortured me because I didn’t realize that it would be that way the whole movie,” Chastain explained.

This sounds in line with what other cast members are saying, as Pennywise actor Bill Skarsgard promised that the dancing clown will be much more vicious after suffering that humiliating defeat in the first film.

“He’s scarier and he’s angrier,” Skarsgard shared with Entertainment Weekly. “There’s a couple of very brutal things in the film.”

The actor previously spoke about how his role as Pennywise has evolved, but it’s only gotten more vengeful.

“He’s been doing this forever really, so he doesn’t change in the sense that you would look differently,” Skarsgard said. “He looks however he wants to look for any particular prey at the time, but I do think there’s a change… The arc of the first movie is that he, for the first time, experiences fear himself. His last line — ‘Fear…’ — is him experiencing it for the first time, and he’s sort of shocked and perplexed and surprised. Like, what is this?”

This provided a major shift for Pennywise, with a major shift in his role.

“He’s inflicted fear on his prey, and he’s very focused on fear, but he’s never experienced it himself,” the actor noted. “Now he’s experienced something that he has been inflicting on others and … there’s a shift leading into the second movie.”

IT CHAPTER TWO premieres in theaters on September 6th.