Pennywise has returned to haunt our dreams once again. Only the Loser's Club, now all a little older (but not necessarily wiser), can stop the creepy clown murdering the population of Derry. Whether they succeed or not is revealed in It: Chapter 2.
Spoilers for It: Chapter 2 ahead. You have been warned...
As with the first movie, there are some significant differences between the movie and the book, including a certain missing mystical animal. In the books, the wise turtle Maturin appears before Loser's Club member Bill Denbrough during the Ritual of Chüd in 1958. However, in the movies, no such turtle appears.
Many fans hoped Maturin, who also appears throughout Stephen King's Dark Tower series, would make an appearance in It: Chapter 2. And, to some surprise, he did. Kind of. "You didn’t see it?" director Andy Muschietti tells GamesRadar and Total Film. "When Ben goes to his High School, again, and enters the classroom? On the middle of the desk there’s a stuffed turtle."
And while the turtle may have appeared in stuffed form, there were originally plans for the beast to appear to Bill during the first movie. "There’s a deleted scene, where the turtle apparates," he says. "It’s a continuation of a sequence from the first movie, where they are in the quarry and Ritchie feels something on his foot. And they all say 'What is it?' And they look underwater and go, 'It’s a turtle!' Then we cut to the sunbathing scene. In the sequel, there’s was a moment when we revisited that scene, with them swimming underwater, and then comes the turtle. You will probably see that in the Director’s Cut."
There you have it: we're going to be waiting until Muschietti's longer cut to see the shelled creature in all his glory. Interestingly, when asked whether the two movies could be cut into a TV series, Muschietti reveals: “Well, it might be… We’re starting to talk about all that, so it’s not a reality just yet.”
The director also spoke to us about some of the other major differences between the movie and the book and how Stephen King came to have a cameo. It: Chapter 2 is in cinemas now.
