Pennywise lives, and it won’t be long before we meet everyone’s least favorite clown beneath the sewers of Derry once more.
But given we’ve already had two IT movies that largely covered the events of Stephen King‘s famous novel, what is HBO Max’s new series IT: Welcome to Derry going to be about?
We’ve seen from the trailer that Pennywise (Bill Skarsgård) will return, and that a bunch of new kids will be banding together to face him — but how exactly does this tie in with the movies and book?
We’ve broken down everything we know so far below.
Is IT: Welcome to Derry based on Stephen King’s book?
Our biggest clues as to what IT: Welcome to Derry will be based on, alongside the trailer, comes courtesy of the official HBO Max logline and some helpful interview quotes from executive producer Andy Muschietti himself.
“Set in the world of Stephen King’s IT universe, IT: WELCOME TO DERRY is based on King’s IT novel and expands the vision established by filmmaker Andy Muschietti in the feature films IT and IT Chapter Two,” reads the logline.
So, the show is based on the novel — but which bit? Well, for that we can turn to a Spanish interview Muschietti gave to Radio Tu earlier in the year, which has been translated by Bloody Disgusting (Mashable hasn’t translated the original interview).
“It’s a story that’s based on the interludes of the book,” Muschietti said. “The interludes are basically chapters that reflect Mike Hanlon’s research. They’re fragments of his research. For 27 years, it’s the guy trying to figure out what it is, what did it, who did it, who saw it, and all that stuff.”
For anyone who hasn’t read King’s novel, Mike Hanlon is the one member of the Losers’ Club who stays behind in Derry after the kids defeat the monster the first time around. The novel has five interludes that are essentially diary entries written by Mike in which he compiles a history of Derry, chronicling the town’s darker chapters that coincide with the cycles in which Pennywise awakens to feed.
“So they talk about catastrophic events from the past, like the fire in the Black Spot… the massacre of the Bradley Gang, a gang of bank robbers in the ’30s… and the explosion of the Kitchener Ironworks,” Muschietti said.
It appears these chapters of Derry’s history will form the basis for the new show.
Credit: HBO
How is IT: Welcome to Derry related to the IT movies?
Although Andy Muschietti’s IT movies were based on King’s novel, there was one key difference that will have a knock-on effect for the series: While the childhood portion of the books was set in the late 1950s, the childhood section of the movies takes place in the ’80s. This means that all the cycles in Muschietti’s IT universe are essentially pushed back by one.
We know from the IT: Welcome to Derry trailer that the series takes place in in 1962, which is the cycle before the one shown in the first IT movie. And we know from Muschietti’s interview that he’s planning three seasons of this new show, each of which will jump back in time.
In the novels, Pennywise’s killing cycles are bookended by catastrophic events. The 1930s cycle starts with the massacre of the Bradley Gang and ends with the fire at the Black Spot, while the cycle before that ends with the Ironworks exploding.
Based on Muschietti’s comments, it seems like the show will bring these key moments in the town’s history to life.