Stephen King’s Greatest Monster Is Getting A Prequel Series
There is a Stephen King IT prequel series coming, which will be called Welcome to Derry.
If you asked Stephen King what his greatest monster was … well, he’d probably say cocaine. But if you asked the Children of the Corn authors’ fans what scared them the most, they would likely say Pennywise the Clown from the creepy book IT. The latter was later adapted into a spooky 1990s TV movie and, decades later, into two theatrical movies. But audiences can’t get enough of this killer clown, and Deadline reports that Stephen King’s IT is officially getting a prequel series, Welcome to Derry, on HBO Max.
If you were a fan of those recent theatrical adaptations of Stephen King’s IT, here’s some good news: the showrunners intend to explicitly build off the cinematic world that we first saw in those movies to create the prequel series.
However, there have notably been no casting announcements for the show. That means we don’t yet know if Bill Skarsgård will once again be bringing Pennywise to life or if a new actor will see how well he can carry red balloons while still looking intimidating.
More good news for fans is that nobody seems more hyped for this Stephen King IT prequel than King himself. Specifically, he is excited that “the story of Derry, Maine’s most haunted city, is continuing.” And he has supreme faith in the talents of showrunners Andy Muschietti and Barbara Muschietti, both of whom brought the newer IT movies to life (Andy was the director and Barbara the producer for these films).
In a move that arguably parallels James Gunn’s hopes for the upcoming DCU movies and shows, it looks like HBO wants the small-screen world of Derry to look and feel no less impressive than it did in the big-screen movies that came before.
And if horror fans had to pick a side, they’d like to agree that a Stephen King IT prequel makes more sense than the upcoming Friday the 13th prequel series that Bryan Fuller is developing for Peacock. While Fuller is an amazing talent who turned Hannibal into the best horror series ever made, it’s not immediately clear what such a series would focus on. This is especially the case since we know that Pamela Voorhees didn’t do that much killing before the first movie and that the series will have to exclude Jason, its most iconic character.
By contrast, though, the world of IT has been terrorized by Pennywise in his clown form for about 200 years, meaning there are centuries of narrative possibilities outside of the characters and events that we already read about and saw onscreen.
Ultimately, while there is no way of knowing if Stephen King’s IT prequel on HBO Max is going to be any good, it will most likely be a hit for fans of the recent movies given all the familiar talent bringing it to life. However, this show will likely succeed or fail based on the strength of its casting.
And we frankly can’t imagine returning to Derry without having Bill Skarsgård put on the clown makeup once again. If they can’t get that veteran actor, though, they could opt for one of the scariest clowns of all: whichever HBO Max executive decided to kill so much of the streaming platform’s content without lowering the subscription price by so much as a penny.
