It Chapter Two runs 169 minutes. That is not a footnote. It is the whole problem.
Trailer, via Warner Bros..
The Losers Club Comes Back to Derry
Andy Muschietti directs the second half of Stephen King’s novel, from a screenplay by Gary Dauberman. The setup is clean: 27 years after the Losers Club beat Pennywise, Mike Hanlon, the only one who stayed in Derry, calls them home. Bill, Ben, Beverly, Richie and Eddie come back. Stanley does not. He kills himself.
The cast is the reason to watch. James McAvoy plays Bill, now a mystery novelist whose endings get criticized. Jessica Chastain is Beverly, a fashion designer married to an abusive man. Bill Hader plays Richie, a Chicago stand-up comic, and he is the best thing in the film.
A Paper Sailboat and a Game Token
The plot sends each Loser back for a personal artifact. Bill recovers Georgie’s paper sailboat. Beverly finds Ben’s love poem. Richie collects a game token from an abandoned cinema. Mike shows Bill a drug-induced vision of the Native American “Ritual of Chüd.”
It ends.
That tagline promises a conclusion. The film keeps delaying it, scene after scene, flashback after flashback.
Bill Skarsgård Still Lands
Skarsgård’s Pennywise still works. Hader works harder. The adult cast sells the reunion, and the film’s best passages are the quiet ones between them.
The rest is bloat. Here is what the film gets wrong, in order of damage:
- The runtime. At 169 minutes, the middle act repeats the first film’s structure without adding dread.
- The Ritual of Chüd. The film builds to a cosmic mechanism it explains badly.
- Stanley. His suicide is a plot hinge the film never really earns.
$473.1 Million and a Split Verdict
On a $79 million budget, It Chapter Two grossed $473.1 million worldwide. Reviews were mixed, with praise for Skarsgård and Hader and criticism for the length. That split is correct.
The Prequel Already Beat It
HBO’s It: Welcome to Derry premiered on October 26, 2025, with Skarsgård back as Pennywise. A prequel had more room to move than this sequel did.
It Chapter Two is not a bad film. It is a swollen one. The performances deserve better than the pacing, and the ending, fittingly for a movie about a novelist who cannot stick a landing, does not stick its own.
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