It appears as though IT: Chapter 2 is going to get straight-up weird. Warner Bros. and New Line decided it would be best to split Stephen King's massive 1,100-page novel into two movies; the first one focusing on The Losers Club as kids fighting Pennywise and the second one mostly focusing on them all as adults dealing with the evil entity once again 27 years later. But don't expect that to be the only change in next year's sequel. According to screenwriter Gary Dauberman, IT 2 is going to include the weirdest scene from the book.
Warning: minor spoilers ahead for IT: Chapter 2. Since it isn't yet clear how exactly this is going to be adapted, we're not getting into heavy spoiler territory. But if you want to go in clean, turn back now. Warning out of the way, Gary Dauberman, who wrote both IT and next year's sequel, has confirmed in a recent interview that the follow-up will include The Ritual of Chud. Before digging into exactly what that is for those who haven't read the novel, here's what Dauberman had to say about bringing certain elements from the book into the sequel.
"The Ritual of Chüd is challenging, but it's such an important component to the book that we had to address it. That stuff is difficult to balance, but because [director Andy Muschietti, producer Barbara Muschietti and I] worked with each other before, when I'm writing pages and all that stuff it becomes more of a conversation and less like, 'Hey, here's what I did.' It's sort of organic; it's really kind of just chipping away at the stone and trying to find the most focused, accessible way into some of more metaphysical aspects of that book...I think that's something that Andy gave a lot of thought about, which was great, because as I was kind of chugging along through the Adrian Melon stuff and sort of more the stuff that's in the book that you kind of just want to see on screen. I'm writing that stuff, and Andy would kind of go off and think about Chüd and how he wants to visually represent all that stuff. He just came up with some brilliant, brilliant stuff... It really is going to be amazing."
There were some weird things in the first IT, but the Ritual of Chud takes the cake. No doubt about it. In the book, the bizarre happening goes on for pages and pages and it takes quite some time to get a grasp on. In short, it involves Pennywise and one of the Losers extending their tongues, overlapping them, they both bite down and exchange jokes until one of them laughs. The one who laughs is banished to the netherworld. Yes, really. While this is going down in the physical world, a psychic battle is taking place in the spiritual plane of existence. Those who have read the novel also know the turtle, who is a god-like creature that represents the counterpoint to Pennywise. The turtle, at one point, actually says this in the novel.
"Once you get into cosmological s*** like this, you got to throw away the instruction manual."
So if you thought the first movie was weird at all, get ready. In addition to being downright bizarre, director Andy Muschietti has also promised that it will be downright terrifying and at San Diego Comic-Con warned moviegoers to bring adult diapers. It's at least cool to know that the filmmakers aren't afraid to be faithful to the source material, no matter what that means. IT: Chapter 2 is set to hit theaters on September 6, 2019. This news was first reported by CinemaBlend
