Xavier Dolan and Will Beinbrink have joined the cast of ‘IT Chapter Two’.
The 29-year-old Canadian actor-and-director will portray Adrian Mellon – who in Stephen King’s original novel was a gay man attacked by bullies – while his new co-star will portray Tom Rogan, the abusive husband of Beverly (Jessica Chastain) in the second part of director Andy Muschietti’s acclaimed re-imagining of the classic 1986 horror story, Deadline reports.
Beinbrink’s casting reunites him with Chastain – who he studied with at Julliard – James McAvoy and Bill Hader, as they were all previously in ‘The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby’ together.
In the sequel, McAvoy plays Bill, Hader is Richie, while Isaiah Mustafa as Mike, James Ransone as Eddie and Andy Bean as Stan make up the other adult members of the ‘Losers Club’.
The group return to Derry, Maine, 27 years after their first battle with the murderous entity Pennywise following a devastating phone call and stop it from bringing death to the American town once again.
Bill Skarsgard is reprising his role as Pennywise and Muschietti is due to start filming the follow-up next month in Toronto, Canada, from a script by Gary Dauberman.
Last year’s ‘IT’ took over $700 million worldwide at the cinema making it the highest-grossing horror film of all-time.
And the book’s author King gave the flick his seal of approval by telling the movie’s producer Barbara Muschietti – the sister of director Andy – that he was terrified by the changes made to his original story.
Referring to a scene in which a young Stan was terrorized by a woman from an old painting, Barbara said: "Stephen King, the first email he sent to Andy when he had seen the movie, the one fear he wrote back, he said, ‘I love the woman in the painting, it scared the s**t out of me.’ "
‘It: Chapter Two’ is scheduled for release on September 6, 2019.