A scene that was reportedly deleted from It for being too disturbing is oddly similar to the most brutal moment in new Jennifer Lawrence film Mother!, and it's safe to say audiences probably didn't need both.
(Warning: Spoilers ahead for It and Mother!)
It star Bill Skarsgård, who plays Pennywise the Dancing Clown in the new Stephen King adaptation, spoke to the Variety Playback Podcast about one particular scene that was left on the cutting room floor. Though he didn't specify exactly which scene from the movie was left out, it reportedly delved into Pennywise's 17th century origin story:
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"The scene turned out really, really disturbing. And I'm not the clown. I look more like myself," the actor told the Variety Playback Podcast. "It's very disturbing, and sort of a backstory for what [the creature It] is, or where Pennywise came from."
Per Buzzfeed, Digital Spy put together that the scene may have been from an earlier draft of the It script. The 17th century origin story the actor speaks of on the podcast resembles one that original writer-director Cary Fukunaga penned before he left the project.
And, boy, is it unsettling.
Not only does Pennywise appear more humanlike in the scene — Fukunaga describes Pennywise's skin as "pale and translucent" — but, in the original version, he also makes a terrible deal with one of the mothers in the town. According to Digital Spy, the original scene involved the parent allowing her daughter to be eaten by the creature in order to save herself.
And you thought that Pennywise biting off Georgie's arm was the worst thing you would see in cinemas.
The weird thing about this scene is that it actually resembles a much discussed (and much maligned) scene in Darren Aronofsky's new movie Mother!, in which Jennifer Lawrence's character watches in horror as a hoard of people accidentally kill, and then butcher and eat her baby. It's...not cute.
Horror is definitely leaning into the baby-eating thing this season, so it's refreshing to hear that It decided to nix one particular moment. Unfortunately for the easily disturbed and squeamish, there's no guarantee that the devil's deal Pennywise makes won't show up in the film's planned sequel.