‘It: Chapter Two’ Footage Terrifies at CinemaCon

Pennywise is dancing back into audiences’ nightmares this fall, and the demonic creature is taking the form of a little old lady.


Warner Bros. and New Line scared the expletive out of theater owners at CinemaCon on Tuesday with a terrifying look at the sequel to their 2017 smash “It.” The Losers’ Club has grown up in the decades since the first film closed, but they are reunited once more after Pennywise, the child-killing clown, returns to prey on the residents of Derry, Maine.


In footage screened at the exhibition industry trade show, Beverly Marsh (Jessica Chastain), the sole female member of the Losers’ Club returns to her childhood home only to find out that her abusive father has died in the years since she left town. There she is invited in by the new resident, who makes her tea and cookies. Slowly she begins to realize something isn’t right. Insects form on the window in a peculiar pattern, the old woman disappears into the kitchen and disrobes while dancing maniacally.


“You know what they say about Derry,” the woman says at one point. “No one who dies here ever really dies.”


“It: Chapter Two” is directed by Andy Muschietti, who oversaw the first film. It co-stars James McAvoy, Bill Hader, Jay Ryan, Isaiah Mustafa, James Ransone, Andy Bean, and Bill Skarsgård, who returns as Pennywise.


In addition to showing Chastain’s spine-tingling return home, Warner Bros. showed footage of Pennywise floating through the air against a sea of red balloons, as well as a reunion of the Losers Club at a Chinese restaurant. There was also a shot of them descending into the town’s sewers where Pennywise lives.


When Muschietti came to CinemaCon in 2017 to tease the first “It,” he promised the crowd of theater owners it would be so scary they would “shit [their] pants.”


“I’m going to double down on that statement,” he said during the footage tease on Tuesday.


The film debuts on September 6, 2019.