In an interview with Total Film magazine (via Bloody Disgusting), “It: Chapter Two” director Andy Muschietti claims a portion of the upcoming sequel’s budget had to do with de-aging the child actors who appeared in the 2017 first installment. All of this for a flashback sequence in which the original actors reprise their “It” roles in the sequel.
“Well, it’s better to shoot it two years later than five years later. But in those two years, they grew up quite a bit,” Muschietti said of his original cast. “Not all of them. Sophia looks exactly the same. Jaeden looks pretty much the same. Finn grew up quite a bit, and he’s a tall guy. But from the beginning, we knew that that would be part of the budget, the visual effects to address that. So we’re going to de-age the kids.”
De-aging VFX is becoming a major trend at the movies. This fall we will see just how far the technology has come since it was first popularly used, by David Fincher, in 2008’s “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.” Martin Scorsese’s “The Irishman” and Ang Lee’s “Gemini Man” will both be using the technology. If you remember, Marvel/Disney used it just this year in “Captain Marvel,” in which Samuel L. Jackson played a 1990s-era version of his character Nick Fury.
“It Chapter Two” is released in theaters nationwide September 4th.