first look at Bill Skarsgard as Eric Draven

In Sweden maybe? He was a decent supporting actor that I doubt many could identify by name, at least in the US, and then poof, IT came out and Skarsgards everywhere.

Has 8! children

Which answers Semi's question "why are there Skarsgards in so many movies now?"

Even so, could you point to some random actor from basically forgettable flicks like Ronin and The Exorcist prequel with several kids and say the same thing? You can't really because minor actors with roles in a few random flicks don't typically find themselves in a family where multiple kids are landing huge acting roles in global theatrical releases left and right. The sudden Skarsgard blitz around the IT remake was real and now they are everywhere.

I'm thinking maybe that name was much more well known in Sweden, where there's probably not a huge amount of actors that have succeeded on an international scale, and then the rest is marketing history. Still it's a pretty unusual occurrence and I'm wondering if anyone else has insight into it.

There are probably worse theories out there considering how fast they popped into the spotlight.