Spin-off series It: Welcome To Derry delves into Pennywise origin story, says films’ director

NEW YORK – One of the most successful supernatural horror film franchises of all time moves to the small screen with It: Welcome To Derry, now airing on HBO and HBO Max.

Based on the 1986 novel It by American author Stephen King, the series serves as a prequel to It (2017) and It Chapter Two (2019), which together earned more than US$1 billion (S$1.31 billion) at the box office worldwide.

The show is set in the 1960s – not long after the events of the book, which followed a group of children terrorised by an ancient evil that appears as the clown Pennywise, emerging from the sewers of their small Maine town, Derry, every 27 years.

The new story is told from the perspective of both adults and children, among them Leroy (Jovan Adepo) and Charlotte Hanlon (Taylour Paige) – whose grandson is the Mike Hanlon character in the films – and a bullied girl named Lilly Bainbridge (Clara Stack).

Director Andy Muschietti – who helmed the movies and developed the series with his sister Barbara Muschietti and showrunner Jason Fuchs – says It: Welcome To Derry is truer to King’s novel because of its timeline.

The first events of the novel take place in the late 1950s, but the first It film is set in 1988.

“What we couldn’t do in the movie in terms of era – because we transposed it to the 1980s – we’re doing now,” Muschietti explains at an October panel at fan convention New York Comic Con.

“So, I feel that in many ways, this first season is closer in spirit, and in texture and feel, to what the book was, even though it’s not the same characters,” says the 52-year-old Argentinian film-maker, who also helmed superhero movie The Flash (2023) and supernatural horror film Mama (2013).

Unlike the rest of the franchise, the series also delves into Pennywise’s backstory and motivations, explaining why this entity targeted Derry and assumed a clown guise.

The idea came to Muschietti towards the end of production on It Chapter Two, when he and Bill Skarsgard – the 35-year-old Swedish actor who plays Pennywise – began daydreaming about the monster’s beginnings.

“I started having these weird conversations with Bill because we were high on the experience of doing It Chapter Two,” Muschietti recalls.

“And we started fantasising about a new story, which was basically the origin story of Pennywise. How did It become the clown?”

Everyone moved on to other projects, but after a while, Muschietti went back to the book and discovered in its pages “a puzzle that was intentionally unfinished’’ by King.

The key elements were fragments of the story compiled by Mike Hanlon, who was played by American actors Isaiah Mustafa and Chosen Jacobs in the films.

“For me, those interludes were kind of a blueprint for a different, hidden story – a story that is told backwards and has, as a final conclusion, the events in which It became Pennywise.”

In 2020, Muschietti and his sister pitched that concept to the man who dreamt up this universe.

Says Barbara Muschietti, 53: “We went to the great Stephen King, who loved the idea and supported us.”

Apart from Skarsgard, It: Welcome To Derry has a completely different cast from the films, and brings a little more diversity to the franchise.

American actress Kimberly Guerrero, 57, plays Rose, a descendant of the Native American tribe that first encountered It. Previously, indigenous Americans had been left out of the It universe, she says.

“The native story has been there, but we’ve never been able to join you all at the table. And so it was such a deep blessing,” she says of signing up for the show.

The Hanlons are African-American, and their lives reflect some of the tensions of the 1960s civil rights and women’s movements.

Paige, the 35-year-old American actress who plays Charlotte Hanlon, says the character reminds her of her grandmother, who lived through that time.

Charlotte also has grave doubts about the couple’s move to Derry as she realises something is amiss, but buries them.

“What scares her is she has a sense that something is just not right.

“But I play a dutiful wife and that’s what you do in 1962: You smile, you cook – and you have thoughts you suppress.”