Given that Tim Curry’s performance as Pennywise was clearly the best part of the 1990 TV mini-series version of Stephen King’s It, there’s been a lot of scrutiny surrounding Bill Skarsgård’s performance as immortal child-eating clown/shapeshifting manifestation of primal fear Pennywise in It’s upcoming big-screen remake. And in a new trailer for the film released this morning, we hear Skarsgård-as-Pennywise’s speaking voice for the first time, a breathy whisper as he lures poor, doomed Georgie Denbrough (Jackson Robert Scott) to his death in the novel’s famous cold open.
Along with an uptick in scary-clown footage, the trailer builds on an increasingly demented chant of “you’ll float too,” as Georgie calls to his brother from his watery grave in the sewers underneath Derry, Maine. All the marketing materials for the film promise an intense experience in breathless terror, so make like Eddie and bring your inhaler when It opens in theaters on September 8.