New Teaser For It Adaptation Explores Friendship And The Sewers

IT - MTV First Look

The sewers beneath Derry, Maine, are home to more than just the town’s wastewater in the upcoming movie based on Stephen King’s It, and a new teaser for the film hints at what else lurks in that dark, grimy labyrinth.

New Line Cinema premiered some new footage from It during the MTV Movie and Television Awards, and it features the film’s young cast of characters taking what appears to be their first foray into the sewers — an adventure that will ultimately force them into an encounter with the clown Pennywise, an evil entity terrorizing the town.

In the preview, the group of young friends begin making their way into the sewer while pondering the content of the “gray water” they’re sloshing around in. They soon discover a shoe floating in the water that likely belongs to one of the many children who recently disappeared in the town.

Directed by Mama filmmaker Andrés Muschietti, It stars Swedish actor Bill Skarsgard (

Hemlock Grove

, The Divergent Series:

The Divergent Series:
) as Pennywise — a role famously (or perhaps infamously) played by Tim Curry in a 1990 television miniseries that first adapted King’s novel. The upcoming movie will be the first half of a two-film adaptation of King’s 1986 novel, with the first installment following the story’s child protagonists and their encounter with Pennywise, and the second featuring adult versions of the same characters reuniting decades later to face Pennywise again.

Along with Skarsgard as Pennywise, the cast of young actors portraying the childhood friends includes Midnight Special actor Jaeden Lieberher and Stranger Things actor Finn Wolfhard, as well as Sophia Lillis (37), Jack Dylan Grazer (

Tales of Halloween

), Wyatt Oleff (Guardians of the Galaxy
), Chosen Jacobs (Hawaii Five-0
), and Jeremy Ray Taylor (Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip).

The road from development to the screen has been a rough one for It, which originally had True Detective director Cary Fukunaga attached, only to have him leave the project in 2015 due to creative differences with the studio. Fukunaga was later replaced by Muschietti, and much of the cast — with the exception of Wolfhard — was also changed as the script was rewritten and revised for the film’s new director.

It is scheduled to hit theaters September 8.