For all the talk that has gone on about Martin Scorsese’s “The Irishman” and its ever-expanding budget, thanks to its reliance on CGI to make star Robert De Niro look decades younger throughout the film, you would think that we’ve reached peak de-aging discussion. But wait, dear reader, “It: Chapter Two” takes the cake for what might be the most over-the-top usage of de-aging tech to date.
Discussing the film with Total Fim magazine (via Syfy), director Andy Muschietti knew that he’d have an inherent problem with filming both installments of ‘It’ so far apart. You see, while the first film focused on the characters as kids and the adults would be featured in the sequel, there was going to be a need to once again use the child actors in the second feature.
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This meant that when the adults have flashbacks to their time in Derry, they’d need to look relatively close to what they did in “It: Chapter One.” Thus, in what seems like a Hollywood first, the filmmaker decided to use de-aging tech in ‘Chapter Two’ on teenagers to make them look just a couple of years younger, to better resemble their ‘Chapter One’ looks.
“From the beginning, we knew that that would be part of the budget, the visual effects to address that,” the director said. “So we’re going to de-age the kids.”
No word on what the budget for this CGI extravagance was in ‘Chapter Two,’ but clearly it was worth the money, as the studio was glad to pay it. Will anyone be able to tell the difference in the new film? And would they have been able to notice any changes if there wasn’t CGI? Those are the questions we’ll just have to wait until September to answer.
“It: Chapter Two” arrives in theaters on September 6.