‘We all float’: The first trailer for Stephen King’s ‘IT’ is pure nightmare fuel

After a long, troubled development and production period that often made it seem like the big-screen adaptation of Stephen King’s 1986 novel of the same name would never make it to the screen, Warner Bros. Pictures and New Line Cinema have finally released the first official trailer for the upcoming, two-part horror film.

Directed by Mama filmmaker Andy Muschietti, It casts Swedish actor Bill Skarsgard (Hemlock Grove, The Divergent Series: Allegiant) as the terrifying evil entity known as Pennywise the clown — a role famously (or perhaps infamously) played by Tim Curry in the popular 1990 television miniseries that first adapted King’s novel.

The first film in the two-part saga follows a group of childhood friends who must overcome their fear to battle an evil, supernatural entity responsible for the deaths of children in their Maine hometown. That film will be followed by a second movie that brings the friends — now adults — back to their hometown when a series of murders forces them to once again fight the creature they defeated decades ago.

Along with Skarsgard as Pennywise, the film’s cast of actors portraying the childhood friends includes Jaeden Lieberher (Midnight Special), Finn Wolfhard (Stranger Things), Sophia Lillis, Jack Dylan Grazer (Tales of Halloween), Wyatt Oleff (Guardians of the Galaxy), Chosen Jacobs (Hawaii Five-0), and Jeremy Ray Taylor (42).

True Detective director Cary Fukunaga was initially attached to direct It, only to leave the project in 2015 due to creative differences with the studio. Fukunaga was later replaced by Muschietti, and much of the cast — with the exception of Wolfhard — was also changed as the script was rewritten and revised for the film’s new director.

Stephen King’s It will arrive in theaters September 8, 2017.