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It is obvious that the man named to play Pennywise in Cary Fukunaga’s remake of Stephen King‘s ‘IT‘ is going to cause some controversy, so it shouldn’t be that surprising when Will Poulter (‘The Maze Runner‘,’The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader’) has been announced to take on the role.

Poulter has some huge shoes to fill as Tim Curry (‘The Rocky Horror Picture Show,”Legend’) truly embodied the role in the 1990 mini-series and caused an entire generation to be terrified of clowns in a way that not even the most recent season of ‘American Horror Story: Freak Show‘ was able to pull off. While I didn’t think that Fukunaga would select a household name for someone to play this iconic clown, I was a little shocked to see someone so young being cast.

Of course if you are an immortal demonic force of evil I’d guess that there is a high chance you’d be able to age rather well. Initially it was rumored that Ben Mendelsohn (‘The Dark Knight Rises‘,’Exodus: Gods and Kings’) would be taking the role, though with him now being attached to the ‘Star Wars Anthology: Rogue One‘ there is a rather large scheduling conflict keeping him from the project. That being said, visually I believe that Poulter has a face that would be much more fitting to be transformed into a clown that could potentially terrify another generation of viewers. While young, I really can’t fault the look that he has being quite perfect for this role.

Let’s just hope that he can emote through the makeup well enough to make the scares feel real.

With filming set to begin this summer, I suspect we’re going to be hearing a lot of casting announcements for ‘IT’ before long. At the very least, the key antagonist is now set which should be a relief to the studio and Fukunaga himself.

While I am not one for remakes, Fukunaga has me sold on his ability to set mood, atmosphere, and suspense with his work on ‘True Detective’ so I’m quite curious to see what he’ll be bringing to this film.

So what might Will actually look like as a clown? Here’s a quick artist’s (Okay, I’m not actually an artist but I play one on here) rendition of what Will would look like in clown makeup in a still from ‘The Maze Runner’!

That’s actually kind of terrifying… Well, my lack of artistic talent that is.

What are your thoughts on Poulter as Pennywise? Can you see this young man evolve into the clown that we love to hate? Share your thoughts below!

Source: Collider