Will Poulter cast as Pennywise in Cary Fukunaga's 'It'

The face of pure evil in Cary Fukunaga’s It will be a bit of an unexpected one. According to Variety, Will Poulter, most recently seen in The Maze Runner, will don the clown makeup for the Stephen King adaptation.

The book, which tells the story of a group of kids battling a shapeshifting evil, is being split between two films, the first of which starts shooting this summer. Poulter is expected to appear in both installments, which already have been scripted by Fukunaga and Chase Palmer.

Variety also reports that Fukunaga, hot off of his success with HBO’s True Detective, first considered older actors—specifically Mark Rylance (Wolf Hall) and Ben Mendelsohn (Bloodline)—for the part, only to be swayed by the much younger Poulter after his audition.