Unlike the 1990 miniseries, It Chapter Two will include a controversial hate crime scene in which a young gay man named Adrian Mellon is beaten by a group of homophobic teens; he’s then tossed off a bridge and into the water, where he’s killed by Pennywise. “It was television and they didn’t have the possibility of making a Rated R [movie] or anything,” director Andy Muschietti told EW about why he kept the scene from Stephen King’s novel. “But, in my vision of the movie, Adrian Mellon was always there. The impact of that event in my mind was always very deep. For me, there wasn’t a choice for that.”
Muschietti, who based what happens to Adrian Mellon (played by Xavier Dolan) on the tragic, real-life fate of Charlie Howard, did make one change from the book, though, in a nod to Howard. “He was asthmatic, so that made things really worse. The thing I’m adding in the scene is that Adrian is asthmatic, as well,” he explained. “For me, it was always an essential part of the story.”
“It’s one of the things that really caused a deep impact on Stephen King when he was writing It. So, he decided to include it,” Muschietti says [about Howard, who was killed in Maine]. “Of course, the names are changed, but the beating happened almost exactly like it’s described in the book, and Charlie died in three feet of water in the canal.”
It Chapter Two opens on September 6.
(Via Entertainment Weekly)
