It director Andy Muschietti on adapting the novel’s hate crime scene

Last Updated on July 30, 2021

We're getting awfully close to the release of IT: CHAPTER TWO, and I couldn't be more excited. Taking place nearly thirty years after the events of the first film, IT: CHAPTER TWO stars Jessica Chastain as Beverly, Bill Hader as Richie, James McAvoy as Bill, Isaiah Mustafa as Mike, James Ransone as Eddie, Jay Ryan as Ben, and Andy Bean as Stanley as they set out to take down Pennywise (Bill Skarsgard) once and for all. The Stephen King novel has been adapted once before as a TV mini-series back in 1990, but it wasn't able to include one of the novel's most shocking moments (no, not that one).

In Stephen King's novel, a young gay man by the name of Adrian Mellon (played by Xavier Dolan in the new film) is attacked by a group of bigots after attending a carnival with his boyfriend. Thrown off a bridge, Mellon manages to survive but is killed by Pennywise. For the first time, this moment will be brought to life in IT: CHAPTER TWO, as director Andy Muschietti told Entertainment Weekly that it was "always an essential part of the story," although he can understand why it wasn't included in the original mini-series.

It was TV and they didn’t have the possibility of making a Rated R [movie] or anything. But, in my vision of the movie, Adrian Mellon was always there. The impact of that event in my mind was always very deep. For me, there wasn’t a choice for that.

IT: CHAPTER TWO screenwriter Gary Dauberman has said that the event marks "the first attack in present-day Derry and sets the stage for what Derry has become." When Stephen King was writing the novel, he heard of the true story of Charlie Howard, another young man who was killed by a group of teens for being gay in a very similar manner, and Andy Muschietti added a new detail to further reference Howard. "It’s one of the things that really caused a deep impact on Stephen King when he was writing It. So, he decided to include it," Muschietti said. "Of course, the names are changed, but the beating happened almost exactly like it’s described in the book, and Charlie died in three feet of water in the canal… He was asthmatic, so that made things really worse. The thing I’m adding in the scene is that Adrian is asthmatic, as well." The first reactions to IT: CHAPTER TWO were revealed just days ago, and they were quite positive for the most part, although many did feel that the film was a little too long. Our own Editor-in-Chief Paul Shirey said that the film "serves as the perfect bookend to Chapter One. Some great shocks and scares with the young and old cast. Bill Hader absolutely steals the movie, which balances heartfelt emotion with creepy jump scares galore."

IT: CHAPTER TWO hits theaters on September 6, 2019.