Andy Muschietti recent two-part adaptation of Stephen King’s IT brought the author’s horror classic to the attention of a while new generation, and now, WarnerMedia wants more. Per The A.V. Club, they will be bringing an IT prequel series to HBO Max, one that tells “the origin story of Pennywise The Clown.”
The show will be called Welcome to Derry, referring to the small Maine town (it’s always Maine with King) that Pennywise uses as his hunting ground. It’ll be set in the 1960s.
If you remember the story, you may be wondering how the show could involve the origins of Pennywise if it’s only set some 60 years ago, since the being known as IT fell to Earth in an asteroid millions of years back. Well, it will; we’ll just have to trust the company logline on this one. I guess the origins of IT and of Pennywise specifically could be different…
Welcome to Derry will be prequel to IT on HBO Max
Pennywise’s pattern is to sleep for around 26 years before waking up and wrecking havoc on the children of Derry for about a year at a time. The first movie covered what happened when he woke up in the ’80s and fought against the Losers Club, who were then children. The second movie covers what happens when they return to Derry as adults and destroy IT for good. So if the prequel is set in the ’60s, presumably it’ll be about a time Pennywise woke, killed a bunch of people and went back to sleep full and happy. Dark stuff.
To make the timeline even more confusing, in Stephen King’s book, the characters take on Pennywise for the first time as kids in the 1950s and then later as adults in the ’80s. And this is all perplexing enough without bringing the mysterious turtle god into it…Hopefully Welcome to Derry will make sense of everything whenever it comes out.
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