Man dresses as Pennywise to frighten New Yorkers on subway

There's no doubt that Stephen King's classic novel IT is one of the scariest stories of all time, and a lot of that is down to the monstrous eponymous antagonist. IT is a shapeshifting monster that haunts the fictional town of Derry, Maine - arising every 23 years to devour innocent children. The eldritch horror most commonly takes the form of a demonic clown called Pennywise, and ever since the movie starring Bill Skarsgård came out in theatres, the spooky clown has petrified millions of people.

This week, commuters in New York got the scare of their lives, when Pennywise appeared to step out of the pages of Stephen King's book and hopped on to a busy subway train.

Check out the trailer for IT Chapter Two in the video below:

Magician and prankster Alejandro Torres dressed up in clown makeup and costume, and even held a red balloon on the L train. When Instagram user Ryan B Taylor spotted Torres, he began filming him, and later the Instagram account @subwaycreatures picked up the footage and shared it, leading to the video accruing over 700,000 views.

Commenting on the stunt in an interview with Patch, Torres stated: "was trying to get back to Brooklyn. I did my best to stay in character but I was exhausted. I want to take stuff that can be seen as scary and make it fun. The reactions so far have been really positive."

Check out the video of the prankster below:

The prank has ended up being a good promotion for IT: Chapter Two, which is allegedly over three hours long. Speaking to Digital Spy, director Andy Muschietti stated: "when you have the movie finally edited and it's 4 hours long, you realise that some of the events and some of the beats can be easily lifted but the essence of the story remains intact."

He added: "You cannot deliver a 4-hour movie because people will start to feel uncomfortable no matter what they see. But we ended up having a movie that is 2 hours and 45 minutes, and the pacing is very good. Nobody who's seen the movie has had any complaint."

Meanwhile, producer Barbara Muschietti added: "We will put out a director's cut because this time it definitely merits it. We have some amazing scenes that didn't make it into the movie."

IT: Chapter Two comes out in cinemas on September 6, and stars James McAvoy, Jessica Chastain, Bill Hader, Andy Bean, James Ransone, Isaiah Mustafa, Jay Ryan, and Bill Skarsgård.