'IT: Chapter 2' will attempt to bring to life some of the weirder elements from the book.
Bill Skarsgard
The second part of director Andy Muschietti's acclaimed re-imagining of Stephen King's 1986 novel is up and running following the success of the first movie last year and, although the first film was eerily spooky, Gary Dauberman has promised that the sequel will push even more boundaries and incorporate some more "metaphysical aspects."
Speaking to Cinema Blend, he said: "The Ritual of Chüd is challenging, but it's such an important component to the book that we had to address it. That stuff is difficult to balance, but because [director Andy Muschietti, producer Barbara Muschietti and I] worked with each other before, when I'm writing pages and all that stuff it becomes more of a conversation and less like, 'Hey, here's what I did.' It's sort of organic; it's really kind of just chipping away at the stone and trying to find the most focused, accessible way into some of more metaphysical aspects of that book."
The Ritual of Chüd is described in the book as a battle of wills in which the murderous clown Pennywise (Bill Skarsgard) and a member of the Losers Club each extend their tongues, overlap them, bite down, and then exchange jokes until one party laughs.
And Dauberman didn't think it was possible to cover the Ritual of Chüd in the first film because him and Muschietti had to get to know one another's cinematic style.
He explained: "I think that's something that Andy gave a lot of thought about, which was great, because as I was kind of chugging along through the Adrian Melon stuff and sort of more the stuff that's in the book that you kind of just want to see on screen.
"I'm writing that stuff, and Andy would kind of go off and think about Chüd and how he wants to visually represent all that stuff. He just came up with some brilliant, brilliant stuff... It really is going to be amazing."
The movie stars James McAvoy as Bill, Bill Hader as Richie, Jessica Chastain as Beverly, James Ransone as Eddie and Andy Bean as Stan.
'It: Chapter Two' is scheduled for release on September 6, 2019.