‘It’ Director Wants Jessica Chastain To Play Bev In The Sequel

A few days on from it opening, and Hollywood is still reeling from the success of Stephen King adaptation “It.” The movie’s looked like it would be a hit for a while, but few imagined that it would have been a hit on this sort of scale — the film took $123 million in its opening weekend, the biggest R-rated and horror opening of all time, and bigger than almost any other movie this year, making it a total home run for everyone involved, especially given that the film wasn’t terribly expensive either.

One of the biggest beneficiaries of this is likely to be Andy Muschietti, the Argentinean director of the film, who with only his second feature has very much launched himself onto the A-list. Muschietti’s been a hot property since his debut “Mama” a few years back (he flirted, ironically, with one of the year’s biggest disasters, “The Mummy,” before dropping out for “It” when Cary Fukunaga vacated the latter job), and though a deal is yet to be signed for him to return, Muschietti is already talking up the sequel, and one cast member he has in mind.

In an interview with Variety, Muschietti reveals that he’s already started thinking about the sequel (which now has a screenwriter), that it won’t be split into two movies as some have speculated, and that there’ll be likely some flashbacks to the kids in “It: Chapter Two,” as it’s being referred to. As for casting for the adult roles, Muschietti’s mostly keeping his cards close to his chest, saying “There are a lot of ideas for the rest of the cast that I’m playing with, but it’s a bit too premature to say those names right now.”

But when the Variety interviewer brings up a certain resemblance between Bev actress Sophia Lillis and Jessica Chastain, who starred in Muschietti’s “Mama,” the director responds “Jessi is an amazing actress and very good friend and I would love her to play Beverly… she loves the movie and it feels like the planets are aligned in that sense, but we still have to make that happen.”

We imagine New Line don’t want the budget to go too high, but the idea of Chastain joining the Losers’ Club is an irresistible one. Elsewhere in “It”-world, Muschietti also tells EW that he’s shifting the back story for another key cast member, Mike, from the book. “I want to make his character the one pivotal character who brings them all together, but staying in Derry took a toll with him. I want him to be a junkie actually. A librarian junkie. When the second movie starts, he’s a wreck. [I want to ] infuse more energy to him in those 30 years we don’t visit. He’s not just the collector of knowledge of what Pennywise has been doing in Derry. He will b ear the role of trying to figure out how to defeat him. The only way he can do that is to take drugs and alter his mind.” Interesting…

You can also see Muschietti talk through a scene from the film below thanks to the New York Times. And while we’re on the subject of Stephen King, yet another adaptation is also in the works, with Deadline revealing that King’s short story “Suffer The Little Children,” in the works from horror helmer Sean ‘not Jay-Z’ Carter, who’s making his debut in 2018 with the Bella Thorne vehicle “Keep Watching.” We’re sure it’ll only be the first of a new wave of King-related announcements…