Bill Skarsgard's Pennywise has fast become one of horror's most striking villains with
his droopy lip, wall-eyed look and iconic red and white make-up joining the rogues gallery
of horror icons such as Freddy Krueger and Michael Myers.
But there are some fascinating and terrifying early designs for the evil clown that didn't
make the final cut.
Yippee-ki-yay, movie lovers, I'm Jan and in this video I'm revealing nine horrifying cancelled
Pennywise designs and transformations you never got to see in IT Chapters One and Two.
And if you'd like a chance to win an awesome Pennywise Funko Pop, be sure to subscribe
and keep watching for more details.
Before arriving at the final look for Bill Skarsgard's Pennywise, director Andy Muschietti
made a sketch in 2015 of what he thought the murderous clown should look like.
That sketch formed the basis for a set of concept art by Daniel Carrasco and although
some of the features of these early designs such as Pennywise's red and white make-up
were kept, other parts were scrapped and instead Muschietti opted to give the villain some
more pronounced baby-faced features such as big eyes and apple cheeks as he felt the contrast
of the character's child-like features and his terrifying behaviour would make him all
the more disturbing.
Although these early designs are very cool, a young child would have likely run a mile
as soon as they set eyes on such a clown.
Skarsgard's Pennywise with his cherub-like cheeks, thick lips and more carefully manicured
hair is less immediately haunting in its appearance, which is part of what helps it lure children
into its gruesome traps.
Watching Pennywise transform into a giant spider-clown was pretty awesome in Chapter
Two.
And the final design was a vast improvement on the spider form that IT took on at the
end of the 90s miniseries; though obviously, there's a difference in budget between the
TV show and films and the technology's advanced massively since then.
Still, part of the terrifying realism of the spider-clown comes from the fact that Bill
Skarsgard filmed these scenes in a motion-capture suit so that the CGI monster retained many
of the actor's facial features.
And although it was pretty freaky seeing Pennywise's head and torso attached to giant sharpened
spider-legs, early concept art revealed in The World of IT book shows a different design
that also gave the hybrid monster some disturbingly-long human-like arms that had fingers not just
on the hands, but running all the way up the arm, giving it a kind of caterpillar-style
look.
In this design, it seems like IT was grabbing either Richie or Eddie in a similar way the
IT spider did to Eddie in the TV series.
We've seen Pennywise transform himself into some pretty gross beings to terrorise the
Losers such as the rotting, diseased Leper that attacked Eddie outside the Neibolt House.
However, an unused design for the spider-clown gave Pennywise a rather vicious set of teeth
on his derriere in what the concept designer Vincent Proce called the Pennywise Arse Mouth.
The way this worked is that the upper parts of each of Pennywise's main four spider-legs
had hidden jaws with grinding teeth that when put together formed what was effectively a
lethal mouth in the creature's butt.
Then when Pennywise trapped a victim below him, the jaws would open up to attack.
Just imagine if we'd seen that in the final film, it would probably have spawned a whole
series of memes to rival Pennywise the Dancing Clown!
Watching the once powerful spider-clown Pennywise shrink into a melted baby version of himself
during his death scene was quite a sight to behold and reminded me in some ways of an
infant Benjamin Button!
But before the filmmakers arrived at the final look for Pennywise during his last moments
on earth, they toyed with other options including a many-eyed version of the shrunken baby-clown.
Yes, after the Losers had beaten down the evil clown with the power of belief and insults,
there was almost going to be a version where we would have seen baby Pennywise's still
over-sized head covered in a grotesque mass of eyes.
The inspiration behind all those eyes on the spider-clown could be the fact that real-life
spiders have multiple eyes.
Or perhaps it's a nod to the various many-eyed beings in mythology and fiction.
Either way, a multi-eyed and shrivelled Pennywise would certainly have been the kind of freaky,
disgusting creature you wouldn't have been able to stop looking at!
And it might have been even creepier if those many eyes also had Pennywise's signature creepy
wall-eyed look, shifting some of them in opposite directions to the others.
There's also some more concept art in the World of IT book of regular Pennywise with
extra eyes in his forehead and also running along the sides of his jaws when he opens
them to reveal the deadlights.
And that too is truly the stuff of nightmares!
Another very creepy unused design for the final Pennywise spider had the clown's head
wedged in the stomach of a big body.
Above the clown's head was a disturbing skull with outstretched arms.
Then rather than well-defined spider-legs, this monster had a mass of tentacle-like appendages
below.
And there's another surreal creature design with tentacles as well as claws which give
it the feel of some kind of gross underwater-hybrid monster.
And one of the tentacles even has teeth and eyes on it!
There's something of a baby-like quality to these designs as well, which makes me think
of the awesomely horrific baby bug creature that emerges from one of the fortune cookies
to terrify the Losers at the Chinese restaurant.
And is a reminder that they've never been able to have babies themselves and have to
retain child-like beliefs in order to defeat IT once and for all.
Another set of unused Pennywise spider designs seem to tip their hat to the spider version
of IT from the TV miniseries.
The body is thicker on these designs than the final version in the film, and this particular
shot of the spider raised up on its legs exposing its abdomen reminds me of how the TV spider
revealed the deadlights to the Losers in the final showdown.
That was also the monster's weak spot and the place where the Losers pulled out IT's
beating heart to defeat the evil entity in the miniseries.
A weirdly mesmerising transformation for Pennywise that Andy Muschietti wanted to include was
called "The Concentric Nightmare".
In The World of IT book, Muschietti describes this unsettling look as "like a sock being
turned inside out."
Accompanying the director's sketch of this Pennywise monster are additional faces and
eyes that the monster's head would seem to transform into.
According to Muschietti, the "Concentric Nightmare" did appear ever so briefly in Chapter Two,
just after Eddie throws the spike Beverly gave him through Pennywise's mouth to stop
it from deadlighting Richie.
When the spike sticks in Pennywise's throat, a version of the "Concentric Nightmare" appears
in a blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment before Pennywise falls backwards and is stabbed.
It's likely that this particular Pennywise design was virtually scrapped in the end because
they wanted to go with more instantly recognisable versions of IT that called back to previous
incarnations of the character we'd seen throughout the movies.
Also perhaps the concentric design was a little too complex to work effectively in the fast-paced,
strobe-lit finale.
Mrs Kersh's transformation into the giant witch that terrorises Beverly back at her
old home happens off-screen.
But in early concept art, the plan was that Bev would see the old lady turn into the many-mouthed
Pennywise monster in front of her eyes.
Some of these early designs for the witch look even more terrifying than the one that
ended up on screen.
But I can see why they cut the character's transformation scene as it makes the witch's
sudden appearance even more of a shock.
There's an intriguing early human version of Pennywise that was actually filmed and
shown in test screenings for Chapter One.
The scene wasn't included in either of the theatrical releases for Chapters One or Two,
but we do have a glimpse of what looks like Pennywise's early human appearance in this
photo.
The scene, which was set in the 1600s, had Pennywise terrorising a mother into giving
up her baby for him to eat and is an early indicator of how It corrupted the inhabitants
of Derry to turn a blind eye to his evil.
The scene may actually show up in the six-hour Supercut of both movies that Andy Muschietti
is planning and if you want to know all about that and the other deleted scenes from Chapter
Two, tap here for my full deleted scenes video.
There's also a link in the video description.
By the way, if you'd like to see even more of the concept art and amazing behind-the-scene
details I discussed in this video, be sure to take a look at the "World of IT" book.
I've added links to that in the video description below.
So, would you like to have seen any of these unused Pennywise designs?
Leave your thoughts in the comments and don't forget to subscribe and hit the Gleam link
below for a chance to win an awesome Pennywise Funko Pop.
The giveaway runs until the end of this month and the winner will be contacted via email.
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