IT is one of the most popular works of Stephen King, a man who has made a career out of terrifying us. It seems that director Andy Muschietti at one point wanted to bring somebody else with a history of giving us chills and thrills into IT Chapter Two, director Gullermo del Toro.
While IT Chapter Two will focus on the Loser's Club character as adults, the movie will still include some sequences with the child versions of the characters from the first movie. According to Slashfilm, there's a scene where the young version of Ben Hanscomb is running through his school to escape Pennywise, and he collides with a janitor. Andy Muschietti revealed to them during the recent press junket that he had wanted to bring in Guillermo del Toto to play that role...
I wanted Guillermo in the movie. Guillermo del Toro. We were this close. He was going to play the janitor that Ben runs into when he’s running away from Pennywise. Yeah. That scene, of course, would have been like five minutes longer if Guillermo was in it.
It seems, as is often the case, the thing that kept the cameo from happening was simply timing. They couldn't work out the schedules of the shooting with the schedule of the busy Guillermo del Toro to make it all happen.
It seems that while Guillermo del Toro does not appear in IT Chapter Two, there are a couple other similar cameos in the movie. One certainly has to wonder if Stephen King himself will show up. He's been known to cameo in movies based on his work, but hasn't done that as much recently, even though we're seeing another surge in popularity for his work. Andy Muschietti says he can get quite ambitious when it comes to casting cameos, so the ones in the movie are probably quite good.
A Guillermo deo Toro cameo would have been great, it's really unfortunate it couldn't be worked out. What I love about it most is the fact that most people wouldn't even notice it. While the fact that you're reading this means there's a high likelihood that you know what Guillermo del Toro looks like and would recognize him if you walked by him on the street, the average moviegoer probably couldn't pick him out of a police lineup.
Even many of those who might recognize him, wouldn't necessarily know who he is, just that he looked familiar for some reason. One imagines a theater seeing Guillermo del Toro dressed as a janitor and one segment of the audience making an audible reaction while the other segment turns to the first to ask what was so funny.
I certainly wonder if the cameos that do appear in the movies are of a similar nature. They could be faces that people might not actually recognize unless they are steeped in the particular culture of horror or film.
We'll be able to go cameo hunting when IT Chapter two hits theaters September 6.
