‘It: Chapter Two’ Footage Shows Jessica Chastain As Older Beverly Marsh Visiting Her Haunted Past – CinemaCon
Warners showed off footage and a teaser from the second part to Andy Muschietti’s uber hit feature take of Stephen King’s It, the sequel zeroing in on the Losers Club as adults, having PTSD over evil clown Pennywise.
We saw older Beverly Marsh (Jessica Chastain) visiting her father’s old apartment where a spooky old lady lives. The apartment is cleaner from what Beverly imagines and while the woman is in the kitchen she retrieves and old love letter from one of her amigos in the Loser’s Club. Flies appear, a sign that Pennywise is around. ”
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“No one who ever dies ever really dies,” says the old lady to Beverly with a freaky straight face. She tells Bev her father was in the circus. Bev is suspicious, but it’s too late the old lady grows monstrous. Cut to teaser of the Losers Club grown up walking through town, reunited. Images of balloons everywhere under a bridge and the last shot of Pennywise saying “Hello”.
Before the footage was shown, Muschietti, who first entered with a bunch of balloons, brought out the entire kid cast from the first It and their adult counterparts.
They were all on stage from Chastain to Bill Hader and James McAvoy as well as the original’s kid stars including Sophia Lillis and Finn Wolfhard – the latter who realized he wanted Bill Hader to play him as an adult because “Richie is funny to himself… ” Quickly quipped Hader, “So it was ‘Who’s an asshole who laughs at his own jokes?'” Wolfhard clawed some ground back, “There’s that, but in my mind it was, ‘If I could get Richie to be as funny as he can be… and Bill Hader is probably my favorite comic actor.” Hader verified the story in Muschietti’s Argentinian accent, “‘Finn wants you to do this.’”
Lillis had a sense that Chastain would play her older character’s self because the actress worked with Muschietti on Mama.
McAvoy said it was Dark Phoenix co-star Chastain who first talked to him about the movie, coincidentally the day after he’d seen the original for the first time. She said, “The kid wants you to play him and I said I’d do it in a heartbeat.”
Muschietti said “From an audience perspective I wanted the adult losers to be believable. I’m proud to say all the people I wanted in the movie finally landed in it. It was incredible to find all the people here were so excited to be a part of it.”
Before rolling the clip, Muschietti said, “The last time I was here I said I promise you you are going to sh*t your pants. Here, I double down.”
The 2017 title made box office history showing that big business could be had during the once dormant post Labor Day weekend: It opened to a September record of $123.4M, and grossed $327.4M stateside, $700.3M.
It: Chapter 2 opens in the same place were the first installment did two years ago, the post Labor Day frame of Sept. 6-8.
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