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It trailer: Clip of Stephen King adaptation shown at SXSW, leaves audience screaming

The teaser features Pennywise and the Loser's Club

Jack Shepherd
Tuesday 14 March 2017 10:21 GMT
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Along with premiering The Disaster Artist, Song to Song, and Atomic Blonde, SXSW Film Festival has debuted the first trailer for Andrés Muschietti’s adaptation of Stephen King’s It.

While no footage of Bill Skarsgård’s Pennywise speaking was shown, audiences were introduced to each member of the Loser’s Club.

Thanks to Bloody Disgusting, who were in attendance, a description of the trailer has emerged, and it sounds as terrifying as expected.

Stephen King's IT trailer (1990)

“The trailer opens with footage of Bill Denbrough making a paper boat for his little brother Georgie. We then move outside, where Georgie is chasing his boat in a rainstorm as it floats next to the curb,” the description reads. “Suddenly, Georgie runs right into a street barrier, which knocks him down on the ground. He then watches as his boat sails into a gutter. He runs to the gutter and tries to see if he can see his boat. As he looks deep into the sewers, Pennywise abruptly appears before the screen cuts to black.”

The members of the Loser’s Club then meet up and realise they’ve all been seeing the same entity until finally someone says ‘The Clown.’

Bill Skarsgård’s Pennywise

The description continues: “The teaser then moves into its centrepiece, which shows the members of the Loser’s Club looking at pictures on a carousel slide projector that suddenly acquires a life of its own and begins moving through the slides at an increasingly alarming speed. The pictures are of Georgie and his parents, and each slide zooms in on Georgie’s face before cutting to his mother, whose hair is covering her face. As the projector moves from slide to slide, the hair moves out of his mother’s face, and her face is revealed to be that of Pennywise himself.

“The trailer then blows through a flurry of shots, as most trailers are known to do. The most striking image from this succession of shots is the unforgettable moment when blood flows out of Beverly’s sink, only in Muschietti’s film it spews out like a geyser and blasts her in the face. There is also a sublime image of Pennywise approaching two of the children (he has them cornered against a wall), but the shot is framed in a way so that only his long, bony fingers fill the screen. The children are in the background, out of focus but clearly terrified.”

The teaser finishes with the Loser’s Club leader, Bill - played by Jaeden Lieberher - walking down into his flooded basement where a ghost taunts him. Then, Pennywise rushes at him, apparently 'leaving the audience screaming' before everything cuts to black, the word It appearing on screen.

Along with the 90-second teaser, a clip taking place just before the overweight Ben Hanscom is attacked by Henry Bowers and his gang was shown.

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Meanwhile, author Stephen King recently praised an early cut of the film, calling It a 'wonderful production’ and writing on twitter how it “succeeds beyond my expectations”.

Along with Skarsgård and Lieberher (best known for Midnight Special), the film stars Jack Dylan Grazer and Finn Wolfhard (Stranger Things).

The remake was originally under the guidance of Cary Fukunaga - the director behind the first season of Nic Pizzolatto's crime anthology True Detective - with The Revenant actor Will Poulter on board to play Pennywise.

Tim Curry previously played the clown in the televised miniseries released in 1990. The remake will be released September 2017.

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