Following a treacherous early development period Warner Bros/New Line’s reboot of It is finally pushing forward. Just recently we learned that Bill Skarsgard – yes, the younger brother of True Blood‘s Alexander – had scored the pivotal role of evil, sewer-dwelling clown Pennywise, and today brings word of another villainous addition. Thanks to a new report from THR, it’s confirmed that Bloodline season two newcomer Owen Teague will be fleshing out the baddies in the Stephen King adaptation.
Teague won’t be in concert with Skarsgard’s character, however, despite them both being distinctly bad apples. Whereas Pennywise is an ancient evil that takes the form of many terrifying figures (hence the clown) to kill children in the town of Derry, Maine, Teague plays someone wholly human named Patrick Hockstetter.
Fans of King’s novel will remember that he’s a particularly nasty dude who hangs around with a gang of older teens who bully the main group of kids, the self-dubbed Losers Club. In the tome, he succumbs to Pennywise, but who knows how he’ll fare onscreen.
Andre Muschietti’s two-part movie plots to divide King’s book into two parts. The first will revolve around the Losers Club while they’re kids, and the second will pick up when they’re adults and return to Derry to face off against Pennywise/It one final time. It’ll be interesting to see how the entire thing plays out in this format, which it almost certainly requires considering the length of the source material. We’ll find out who survives the sewers and who perishes when the first part of It arrives on September 8, 2017.