It's always been the plan to adapt Stephen King's IT in two parts and it's thought that Chapter Two will be released in 2019. Andy Muschietti will be back at the helm and he's revealed in an interview with Entertainment Weekly that while the movie is going to take place in the here and now, the child actors will return in flashbacks which the filmmaker promises will "inform the story in the present day."
He adds that "they’re a very big part of the action" while sources tell the site that no decisions have been made about whether well-known actors or unknowns will be cast as the adult Losers Club.
So far so good then but additional details may just disappoint fans of the books. Mike Hanlon was already sidelined in IT: Chapter One and now the plan is for the one member of the Losers who stays behind to be turned into a drug addict, a far cry from the novel where he was simply a librarian.
"My idea of Mike in the second movie is quite darker from the book. "I want to make his character the one pivotal character who brings them all together, but staying in Derry took a toll with him. I want him to be a junkie actually. A librarian junkie. When the second movie starts, he’s a wreck. He’s not just the collector of knowledge of what Pennywise has been doing in Derry. He will bear the role of trying to figure out how to defeat him. Only way he can do that is take drugs and alter his mind."
The filmmaker does have an explanation for this change, though, and it's roots are in the book. "It resonates with what the kids do when they go to the smokehouse in the Barrens. By inhaling these fumes from the fire they have visions of It, and the origin of It, and the falling fire in the sky that crashed into Derry millions of years ago. We’ve brought that to Mike, by the end of those 30 years Mike has figured out the Ritual of Chüd." It sounds like things will be getting as weird here!
Finally, it's also been confirmed that Stan Uris [SPOILER ALERT] will commit suicide as an adult at the start of IT: Chapter Two, something which is faithful to the novel. That's it for now but things are definitely looking good for the sequel; we'll just have to wait and see how it improves on the novel's failings but also does justice to the parts fans are desperate to see play out on the big screen.