It: Chapter 2 Will Tackle Some of the Novel’s Craziest Material

It’s sounding more and more like It: Chapter 2 will certainly be the stranger of these two horror installments. As more details leak out about the sequel to last year’s global horror smash hit, we’ve been given more of an idea of how Chapter 2 will tackle some of the most confusing and brain-expanding material from Stephen King’s infamous novel.

Speaking with CinemaBlend, It screenwriter Gary Dauberman dove into how the film will depict King’s “Ritual of Chüd,” a sort of psychic and metaphysical contest of wills that the adult Loser’s Club wage against It, in an effort to destroy It once and for all. These elements are difficult to fully understand in the context of King’s own novel, and it has been assumed they’ll be quite tricky to translate to the screen as well. Here’s what Dauberman makes of it:

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.”

It’s certainly exciting to think that Muschietti is putting so much thought into how he wants to depict that struggle of wills, as well as put his own visual stamp on it, as seen in the first installment of It. In a SlashFilm interview last year, Muschietti also spoke about the cosmic entity referred to in King’s book as “The Turtle,” a force of benevolence that stands in oppositions to It. As he said then:

The moment you introduce the element of IT, which is an interdimensional evil entity, the presence of the turtle comes with it, as a counterbalance. It doesn’t seem to play a big role, but the turtle is there. Like all mythologies, there’s a god of good and a god of evil. I didn’t want to use it as a fantastic character, but it’s hinted, every time the kids are in danger or something, I wanted to hint at the presence of the turtle…

In the book, they somehow address the turtle and say ‘the turtle couldn’t help us.’ But I think in the second part, the turtle will try to help them. In the second movie, the turtle left a few clues to their childhood that they don’t remember. They have to retrieve those memories from the summer of 1989, and that’s how we jump back to 1989. The keys to defeating to Pennywise are left in the past, and as adults, they don’t remember.”

We find ourselves increasingly excited to see how Muschietti will blend timelines in Chapter 2, bringing back the child actors of the original while melding their stories with the future versions of themselves. In general, though, Chapter 2 promises to be just plain stranger than the first go around, and we’re fascinated to see how multiplex audiences will react.

It: Chapter 2 is scheduled to hit theaters on Sept. 6, 2019.