2017’s adaptation of Stephen King’s novel, IT didn’t pull any punches with audiences, despite the majority of its cast being children. However, a deleted scene that depicted an alternate opening to the film showed Georgie Denbrough surviving his encounter with Pennywise the Dancing Clown.
From director Andy Muschietti and writer Gary Dauberman, IT brought all the most brutal aspects of King’s novel to the big screen in a sleek, cinematically gorgeous way. The talented young actors who portrayed members of the Losers’ Club made audiences feel - and fear - for their hardships, but particularly for Bill Denbrough, who is tormented throughout the first film by the death of his little brother, Georgie. While this allowed Bill to stand up and become one of the driving forces behind the battle against Pennywise, it’s certainly no easy feat to overcome grief, bullying, and the early stages of young adulthood all at once. Muschietti - who obviously has a sense of humor - sought to lighten one of the film’s more brutal sequences with a hilarious alternate opening.
There really was no way to go about making IT without Georgie’s death, but the comical take on the sewer exchange between Georgie and Pennywise is worth watching, even if it’s only just an alternate take on the film’s sad reality.
IT’s Alternate Opening Let Georgie Live
The alternate opening was included as a deleted scene on the Blu-Ray of Andy Muschietti’s 2017 IT movie, and gave Georgie Denbrough a much happier ending. While it’s common for deleted scenes to include sequences from a film that didn’t fit for one reason or another, or perhaps had to be shaved down for time or a different rating, it seems that Muschietti added this gem of a scene just for laughs. After all, there’s certainly nothing funny about cold-blooded child murder by an evil clown. The original scene - which has since become iconic - has been parodied many times before both in meme form and even in larger capacities, such as the Kellyanne Conway parody on Saturday Night Live. While Georgie’s fate did become a huge catalyst for the Losers’ Club to go after Pennywise in the first place, led by his brave big brother Bill, it’s nice to think about what might have happened if he’d just grabbed that boat a little quicker.
Though it was clearly only a joke sequence, the light-hearted take was likely fun for actor Jackson Robert Scott, who can most recently be seen on Netflix’s Locke & Key. Child actors in horror movies don’t always have the easiest job, especially when they get dismembered on-screen, and, in the past, great lengths have been taken to ensure the young actors are given a safe - and fun - working environment. Stanley Kubrick saw to this during The Shining, where the young actor who played Danny Torrance, Danny Lloyd, didn’t even know he was making a horror movie. Kubrick tried to shield him from all the violence sequences in the film, and Shelly Duvall even carried around a life-sized dummy during some of her scenes instead of the actor playing her son.
While this seems a little far-fetched in some capacities, it’s nice to know that the actors got to clown around on the set of IT behind the scenes.
Next: Pennywise Isn’t The Only Member Of IT’s Species (In Stephen King’s Books)
