Once there, IT adopted its usual pattern of hibernation that lasted between 27 and 30 years, awakening to kill and eat and then going back to sleep. However, each awakening (which lasted roughly a year to 18 months) and return to hibernation was marked by events of great violence.
1935: IT awakens after the Bradley Gang shootout. 1962: IT awakens when the The Black Spot is burned down by a cult. 1989: IT awakens to eat kids for a year before going into hibernation. Georgie Denbrough dies by Pennywise biting his arm off and dragging him into the sewers.
Bill Skarsgård as Pennywise the Dancing Clown: An ancient predatory creature from another dimension which was brought to Earth millions of years ago by a meteorite. It awakens every 27 years to feed on the fear of children that it kills.
Even though Tim Curry's performance as Pennywise is iconic, he actually only had about 20 minutes of screentime. With a run time of around 192 minutes, this leaves Curry only sharing about 10% of it total. This just goes to show how tremendous of a performance he did, as most people only remember his parts of the film.
How many years does Pennywise sleep in the movie IT?
I know that the sleep is 27 years, but when does he decide to go to sleep? The movie's timeline seemed pretty long compared to some other of the town's past where he seemed to instantly be satisfied, like with the Black Spot and that factory explosion.
IT can also be awakened by an act of violence on top of Pennywise's 27-30 year cycle. The 1986 Stephen King's IT novel begins with a boy named Dorcey Corcoran being beaten to death by his stepfather, Richard Macklin, in 1957, which awakens Pennywise.
They reach the conclusion that Pennywise has all of the adults under some sort of spell that prohibits them from seeing him. The adults of Derry are shown to be villainous in their own right as well. The adults of Derry are shown to be true villains of the story in the same way as Pennywise.
It slept for millions of years, then, when humans appeared in the area, It awoke and began a feeding cycle lasting about a year, feeding on people's fears and frequently assuming the shape of whatever its prey feared the most. After feeding, It would resume hibernation for approximately 30 years before reappearing.
A powerful and centuries old being in the form of a clown, Pennywise would awaken in many 27 year cycles of terror, feasting on the residents of Derry, Maine until going back into hibernation deep beneath Derry.
The novel explains that IT landed on Earth during an asteroid impact and established itself under the land Derry would be later built on, and initially preyed on indigenous tribes. From that point of view, IT/Pennywise would be billions of years old, but his clown shape wouldn't be that old.
Basically, children are delicious. That hunger for tasty, tasty, beautiful fear is pretty much the sole reason It returns to Derry, Maine every 27 years to torment and feed on the townsfolk before retreating into a new cycle of slumber.
Pennywise had targeted Georgie when the boy was too young to know any better or fight back. In the clown's most contemptible murders, Pennywise did not rely on visions or fears to lure Georgie in; instead, Pennywise exploited Georgie's trust and turned it into a fatal weakness.
Pennywise was always evil - or, more accurately, he never really existed. He was just a creation of IT to lure in children so they could be terrified and then eaten. Or so that IT could create chaos, incite riots and spread fear.
Stephen King's IT introduced readers to a one-of-a-kind creature that can take any form, the most common one being Pennywise the Dancing Clown, and as menacing as it is, this creature has one big enemy it's truly scared of: Maturin, the turtle.
Georgie Elmer Denbrough is a fictional character created by Stephen King from his 1986 epic horror novel It. Georgie is the younger brother of Bill Denbrough, and falls prey to Pennywise the Clown. He is used by Pennywise to taunt Bill throughout the novel.
Though there are some IT characters just as scary as Pennywise, the film's main villain proves to be its deadliest, with a kill count that actually reaches into the tens of thousands. Reddit user u/angelholme estimates that Pennywise actually took the lives of between 12,117 and 18,011 people.
In the novel, It's origins are nebulous. He took the form of a clown most frequently, Mr. Bob Gray or Pennywise, but his true form is an ancient eldritch entity from another universe who landed in the town that would become Derry by way of an asteroid and first awoke in 1715.
We all remember our first time meeting the infamously scary clown known as Pennywise. It came from the sewers or poked its big red nose out of an old drainpipe.
Throughout Stephen King's It, Pennywise is referred to as a male, but author Stephen King pulled a fast one on readers in the It book ending by revealing the creature's true form was a pregnant spider, implying that it is, in fact, biologically female.
So in this case, Pennywise is an entity that feeds on fear and fear actually gives him power, but he needs a constant supply of it, otherwise his physical form weakens and can eventually be destroyed.
The prosthetics made him drool excessively but they leave a lot of that in the movie as director Andy Muschietti felt it nicely fit into the ravenous nature of Pennywise. The drooling around children was worked into the story. 12.
But, the film makes clear, It (sometimes written as “IT”) isn't just a clown. Oh no. As detailed in King's novel, he's an ancient, cosmic being, described in the novel as an “Eater of Worlds”, who is able to adopt a variety of nasty guises.
Pennywise targets children instead of adults because they are easier to scare and manipulate. Their fears are often simpler, more direct, and easier for Pennywise to exploit.
It describes that it prefers to kill and devour children, not by nature, rather because children's fears are easier to interpret in a physical form and thus children are easier to fill with terror, which It says is akin to marinating the meat.
