"The terror, which would not end for another twenty-eight years--if it ever did end--began, so far as I know or can tell, with a boat made from a sheet of newspaper floating down a gutter swollen with rain." So begins Stephen King's acclaimed horror novel It, a tale of a team of self-professed "Losers" who battle an ancient and unstoppable evil both as children and adults. And as the first trailer for Andrés Muschietti's adaptation shows, this movie is sticking close to the source material.

Our first indication of this is the opening sequence shown in the trailer, which features a very rainy day in Derry, a wax-sealed paper boat, and the unfortunate last few moments of the life of little Georgie Denbrough (Jackson Robert Scott) as he runs down a flooded street and meets Pennywise the Clown, portrayed by Bill Skarsgaard (Hemlock Grove). While that should please book fans, there's plenty more nods to be found in this trailer alone: the house at 29 Neibolt Street, the fire at the Black Spot, and Beverly Marsh's disturbing plumbing problems, to name a few.

And yet there are nods to the news 80s setting that change up the book's plot to reflect the movie's time period, changes that serve the story while keeping the spirit of the novel intact. We don't get the best sense of the Losers' individual personalities just yet, but this should be a reassuring first look for King fans.

It opens September 8, 2017, and also stars Jaeden Lieberher, Finn Wolfhard, Jack Dylan Grazer, Wyatt OleffChosen Jacobs, and Jeremy Ray Taylor. Watch the first trailer below:

For those who are unfamiliar with the story, here's the synopsis:

New Line Cinema’s horror thriller “IT,” directed by Andrés Muschietti (“Mama”), is based on the hugely popular Stephen King novel of the same name, which has been terrifying readers for decades.

 

When children begin to disappear in the town of Derry, Maine, a group of young kids are faced with their biggest fears when they square off against an evil clown named Pennywise, whose history of murder and violence dates back for centuries.

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Image via Warner Bros.

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Image via New Line Cinema