Last week, Andrés Muschietti’s adaptation of horror classic It hit theaters, bringing the Stephen King story back into the zeitgeist. The movie’s most iconic scene has already been turned into a meme that is sweeping across social media, and now the sequence has been re-created in Grand Theft Auto V.
The children that make up the “Losers’ Club” in It are hounded by the terrifying Pennywise, an ancient evil that tends to take on the form of a deranged clown. As the story gets underway, the ill-fated Georgie Denbrough has a brief, unpleasant encounter with Pennywise after his paper boat gets swept down a storm drain during a rainstorm.
When the scene is transplanted to the streets of Los Santos, the role of Georgie is filled by Jimmy De Santa. If you haven’t played through Grand Theft Auto V, Jimmy is the lazy, obnoxious son of protagonist Michael. In keeping with the game’s setting, and the character’s reliance on technology, he chases his smartphone down the storm drain rather than a paper boat.
Pennywise seems to be portrayed by Trevor Philips, which makes a lot of sense, given the character’s capacity for chaos and his murderous sensibilities. While Jimmy’s appearance is unchanged from his standard in-game look, Trevor’s hair seems to have been modified using external tools to add a clownish red wig.
Whether you’ve seen It or not, you can probably determine that the encounter doesn’t turn out too well for Jimmy. Suffice it to say, he doesn’t get his phone back.
Buy Now has proven to be a handy tool for Machinima creators, with most new movies getting some kind of in-game remake ever since a version of the trailer for Star Wars: The Force Awakens went viral in 2015. It isn’t just films that get the treatment — last year a trailer for Battlefield 1 received a shot-for-shot remake set in Los Santos, too.
The freedom to dress up characters and put them in wild situations makes Grand Theft Auto V perfect for movie making, but it is the tools that developer Rockstar Games cooked up that make these projects possible. The Rockstar Editor was released in 2015, but it’s still popular.
