The new IT sequel, starring a zillion famous people and a terrifyingly de-aged Finn Wolfhard, may be an over-long and muddled movie that never captures the magic of the original, but it still made enough money to buy the entire town of Derry, Maine. IT: Chapter Two pulled in a whopping $91 million in the US alone during its opening weekend, and it’s now officially the second highest-grossing horror film of all time, right behind IT: Chapter One.
Warner Bros. is presumably already scheming about ways to keep things going for a Chapter Three—and Bill Skarsgard is already down, apparently. The Pennywise actor sat down for an interview with Entertainment Weekly recently to talk about the new film and how, exactly, he’d like to bring everybody’s least favorite clown back to the big screen.
Videos by VICE
Skarsgard says that a third IT movie “would be fun,” even though they’ve run out of book to adapt. But seeing as how Pennywise the Dancing Clown had been wreaking havoc on Derry every three decades or so long before the Losers Club went to war with him, there’s easily the possibility of a prequel.
“The book ends where the second movie ends, so that is the final chapter of this story,” Skarsgard tells EW. “There is this interesting aspect of going back in time before all this happened. There might be a story there that might be worth exploring. Obviously that would be a story that’s not in the book, it would be a freestanding story, but obviously within the same universe.”
And, sure, it’d be fun to watch Pennywise terrorize some 1920s children as they push a hoop down a road with a stick or whatever, but if Warner Bros. really wants to get weird, the studio should just go full Joker with it.
A dark, gritty Pennywise origin story following his early adventures fighting a giant, interdimensional turtle god in some other universe? Sounds great. Plus, then we’d get to see Bill Skarsgard really stretch his acting chops by playing a set of malevolent orange lights! Just give the movie a Golden Lion already.
