Stephen King’s ‘IT’ remake almost cast Tilda Swinton as Pennywise, it has been revealed by producer Barbara Muschietti.
JoBlo recently published the results of their set visit that took place while director Andres Muschietti was filming the IT movie. During the conversation on set, the director revealed that Tilda Swinton was indeed seriously considered for the part, but she wasn’t available during the window they had to shoot the movie. Here’s what he had to say about it.
“She wasn’t available. No, no I swear to god. She was not. We had a slot to shoot the movie and she wasn’t available so she didn’t even audition. But of course, we all thought about it.”
Tilda Swinton is a total chameleon of an actress and would have been a fascinating choice for the part. Sadly, we won’t even get to see an audition tape. In the earlier days of the IT movie before Andres Muschietti came on board, We’re The Millers star Will Poulter was cast to play Pennywise, but scheduling conflicts prevented him from actually being able to keep the part. Producer Barbara Muschietti revealed that they auditioned literally hundreds of people for the role of all shapes and sizes before ultimately arriving at Bill Skarsgard.
“We auditioned literally hundreds of potential Bob Grays or Pennywises and it was an amazing process. We got to audition people that don’t audition anymore and a huge gamut of talent; women, younger age, older age, we really went through the spectrum of actors.”
It’s clear that New Line isn’t screwing around with IT. They seem to know just how much people want to see this movie and they were willing to commit a lot of resources to do it properly. Trying to even bring in someone like Tilda Swinton to play a clown that eats kids speaks volumes. But what is it that made Bill Skarsgard, a relatively unknown actor prior to this, stand out? As Barbara Muschietti tells it, he knocked it out of the park.
Source: Movieweb.
