A disturbing deleted scene from IT hinted at the origins of Pennywise - and showed the monster devouring a baby. While it was always expected that IT would do well at the box office, the scale of its success has been stunning. It's officially the highest grossing R-rated horror movie of all time – beating The Sixth Sense and The Exorcist – and it received strong reviews from both critics and fans.

The horror genre has been having a great year; not only was IT a record-shattering success, but movies like Get Out, Annabelle: Creation and Split have also attracted healthy profits and great reviews. Despite IT’s hefty runtime, it still had to trim out a few scenes. Pennywise actor Bill Skarsgard recently spoke of one such disturbing” flashback scene set in the 1600s that was cut, but he didn’t explain why it was so unnerving.

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Thanks to a podcast interview over at Throwing Shade, actor Timothy Simons – who tested for the Pennywise role – confirmed rumors the scene featured the creature eating a baby. Simons had this to say about the flashback:

It was [Pennywise] way back at the beginning of Derry convincing the woman to give him her baby to eat. And it was scary. The thing that was scariest about it was that it was very direct. It was, 'If you don't do this, these are the things that I'm going to do.' And they were all terrible.

Pennywise in IT standing in front of windows

A post has also popped up on Reddit that appears to show the scene as it appeared in the script; it features a woman named Abigail trying to shield her infant from an early form of the shape-shifting monster. Pennywise takes on a few different forms throughout the scene and demands the young mother hand over her child to him, or he’ll destroy the entire community. This snippet comes from the end of the scene:

She turns away from the baby. Faces those dying embers. We keep on her face as they seem to begin GLOWING BRIGHTER AS -- OVER HER SHOULDER -- OUT OF FOCUS -- Pennywise crawls over to the Baby and starts to feast. SHARP CRY FROM THE BABY CUT OFF as we hear a CRUNCH. Abigail continues to look into the BRIGHT ORANGE GLOW of not the flickering fire... ...but the DEADLIGHTS. Her expression changing. Fear. Denial. Grief. Acceptance. And then nothing. Just a glazed look. AS IF NOTHING HORRIFIC IS ACTUALLY HAPPENING BEHIND HER.

It’s unknown if this flashback was filmed or was scripted only, but it’s a chilling scene that shows that Pennywise infected Derry with his evil from an early stage. Perhaps director Andy Muschetti removed the scene because he felt it was a little too horrific, or because he wanted to keep Pennywise more of an enigma. There’s been talk of a Director’s Cut of IT that will restore some of the key deleted scenes, so there’s every chance this flashback could reappear in that version.

NEXT: IT Actor Wants to 'Go Into Pennywise's Mind' in Chapter 2

Source: Throwing ShadeReddit

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