The 'It' Movie Cut a Crucial Scene From Stephen King's Book

The film adaptation of Stephen King’s horror classic It is good, even if Pennywise isn’t as scary as many early reviewers might’ve hoped. Even so, it’s probably a good thing that the film cut what’s probably the most horrifying scene from King’s 1986 novel: a scene where six underage boys have group sex with an underage girl.

There are some mild spoilers for It below, but the gross stuff isn’t in the movie anyway.

During the climax of one of the novel’s two plots (It simultaneously follows the main characters’ fight against Pennywise as kids and adults), the seven kids who make up the Losers’ Club manage to vanquish the evil clown, putting an early end to his reign of terror. The problem is, having just traveled down into the sewers of Derry, Maine, in order to confront Pennywise, the Losers are all hopelessly lost.

For … reasons, Beverly Marsh, the only girl in the group, tells her six friends that they need to each have sex with her in order to codify their bond and, somehow, show them the way home.

So, uh, they do that, and Stephen King writes six back-to-back sex scenes between minors.

According to director Andy Muschietti, the infamous scene was never going to be included in the film adaptation. “I think the group scene was a bit of unnecessary broad metaphor of that rite of passage,” he told Deadline.

Here’s Muschietti:

I wasn’t interested in that part. My emotional experience with the book did not regard that scene at all, and I think in general it’s an unnecessary metaphor at the end of the story of a rite of passage. That actually was talked about during the whole story, but it was a bit unnecessary. It’s great in the book. I love Stephen King’s style, his way of shocking people with those tonal swings and unexpected intensity, but I think while it was jarring in the book, it wasn’t necessary in the movie adaptation. For me it was about engaging the audience from an emotional point of view with the characters.

His sister and creative partner, Barbara Muschietti, confirmed that the underage orgy wasn’t present in original director Cary Fukunaga’s script, either.

In the movie, after defeating Pennywise, the Losers’ Club doesn’t get lost (or, at least, they aren’t shown getting lost onscreen). Therefore, there is mercifully no underage sex scene.

In case you were wondering, the three other most fucked-up scenes from the book also don’t make it into the movie.

It opens in theaters on September 8.