60-SECOND SCREENPLAY
TF SAVES YOU A NIGHT OUT EVERY MONTH. THIS ISSUE: IT: CHAPTER TWO…
It Chapter Two in bite-sized form. What a nightmare!
FADE IN:
EXT: DERRY, MAINE
A violent encounter, coupled with a high box-office performance from the first film, reboots PENNYWISE. ISAIAH MUSTAFA calls his old friends to return home.
JAMES MCAVOY
Hi Isaiah! Derry? Nah, don’t remember it. It would be great to catch up with the gang though, who I also don’t remember.
JESSICA CHASTAIN
I’ll come too. Can’t wait. Who are you again?
BILL HADER
Count me in! I have no idea what you’re talking about, but I’m happy to provide tonally jarring comic relief. The rest of the gang also agree to return despite not remembering what happened to them, except for ANDY BEAN, who kills himself because he remembers too much.
ISAIAH MUSTAFA
The rules about this aren’t particularly clear, are they?
INT: CHINESE RESTAURANT
The gang all catch up over drinks while never once questioning the gaps in their memory.
JAMES MCAVOY
…so now I’m a very successful writer, just like Stephen King, and everyone keeps telling me that my endings suck… just like Stephen King!
JESSICA CHASTAIN
Well at least if we’re all joking about it now, then this film is self-aware enough to have a really good ending instead.
JAY RYAN
I’ll be pleased as long as it’s not just a series of stupid CGI creature scares! Suddenly the fortune cookies burst into flying bug babies and crawling eyeballs.
ISAIAH MUSTAFA
Yeah, you see, I really thought you would have remembered this stuff.
INT: ISAIAH’S HOME
ISAIAH convinces JAMES MCAVOY to come to his home to understand what is happening.
ISAIAH MUSTAFA
So the evil clown is actually an ancient force of darkness that we can defeat if we use the Ritual of Chüd.
JAMES MCAVOY
Er, yeah, I don’t understand what’s happening.
ISAIAH MUSTAFA
You just have to trust me. ISAIAH secretly drugs JAMES MCAVOY so that he experiences PENNYWISE’s origin story as a visual effect.
JAMES MCAVOY
I’m going to choose to believe that wasn’t the drugs and that it’s all real. Let’s tell the others!
INT: HOTEL
ISAIAH explains that each of the cast have to split up and have a series of episodic encounters with PENNYWISE.
JAMES RANSONE
But we’re stronger when we stick together! That’s literally what both these movies are about.
INT: CAVE BILL HADER
Yeah, but we have to pad out the ridiculous three-hour runtime somehow. The gang each run into PENNYWISE, who appears as a giant baseball-wielding lumberjack, a giant naked old lady and a normal-sized guy with a giant tongue.
PENNYWISE
Aha! I can appear as your worst, most horrifying nightmares and I will kill you all! Or just scare you! My purpose is unclear! Meanwhile, JAMES MCAVOY finds his old bike in a shop, run by a familiar face.
STEPHEN KING CAMEO
I’m a big fan. Apart from the fact that all your endings suck.
JAMES MCAVOY
Haha! So this film IS self-aware enough to have a really good ending instead! It isn’t. The gang face decreasingly scary visuals until JAMES RANSONE dies. Eventually PENNYWISE turns into a big spider and they defeat him by slagging him off a bit.
BILL HADER
That was it? That’s all we had to do?
JESSICA CHASTAIN
Hey, do you think we’ll all remember what happened this time?
JAMES MCAVOY
I really, really doubt it… FIN
NEXT ISSUE: GEMINI MAN