‘It’ Director Explains Difference Between Movie and TV Pennywise

While the Pennywise of the It TV miniseries was a surprisingly human-like eater of children, don’t expect the same for the Dancing Clown of the upcoming film adaptation of Stephen King’s horror classic. Movie Pennywise won’t be as good at mimicking human behavior as Its TV counterpart.

On Tuesday, Den of Geek posted an interview with It director Andy Muschietti where he explained how the film and TV versions of Pennywise would differ. “In fact, one of the descriptions of the character in the book is that IT was not very good at replicating human emotions. And that’s something that is overlooked in general,” Muschietti said. “In the 1990 adaptation you see Tim Curry and he is consistently rowdy and loud and pretty human, for a child murderer. And I wanted to bring that sort of glitch, erratic behaviour, with the purpose of making him unsettling.”

However, there is one emotion that the film Pennywise will have no trouble replicating. In an interview published in August, Bill Skarsgard (who plays the Clown in the It film) told Entertainment Weekly that “It truly enjoys the shape of the clown Pennywise, and enjoys the game and the hunt.”

Based on trailers for the film, Pennywise’s “erratic” behavior definitely makes It a disturbing, unpredictable evil, and emphasizes the fact that It’s from another dimension. Tim Curry’s showman-like approach to Pennywise was a big part of what made the 1990 miniseries so great, and it looks like the film found a way for Pennywise to be unique while being just as frightening.

It hits theaters this Friday, September 8.