One of the most popular franchises to get a revival in the last decade has been Stephen King's IT. The Iconic horror author’s most popular book got rebooted by Warner Brothers with Andy Muschietti’s 2017 film It which quickly led to a sequel in 2019. The dreadfully scary franchise is about to expand into a new prequel series for WB’s rebranded Max streaming service, and now we know Welcome to Derry will debut in 2024.The news came as part of a larger Max rebranding announcement where WB laid out their new pricing model and future lineup for the streaming service. This shouldn’t come as much of a surprise as the first casting announcements for Derry were made earlier this month. So far the IT prequel series stars Taylour Paige, Jovan Adepo, Chris Chalk, and James Remar. The series will be co-showrun by Jason Fuchs and Brad Caleb Kane while Muschietti will direct several episodes of Derry.
What’s Welcome to Derry about?
While there’s still a lot of horrifying mystery surrounding the series, Welcome to Derry will start in the 1960s and slowly lead up to the events of the first IT film. While Bill Skarsgård’s not expected to return to the series as Pennywise, Derry will be further exploring the villain’s origin story. This is only something that was hinted at in the two It films. What exactly Pennywise is and how they tie into the larger “King-verse” has been something that has largely been left on the pages of the author’s meaty 1000-plus page horror epic. Because of that, it’s going to be very interesting to see what Derry pulls from the source material and how it connects to its cinematic counterpart.
The Legacy of IT and Pennywise the Dancing Clown
When King’s novel was released in 1986, IT took the horror world by storm and Pennywise was quickly adapted into a TV movie miniseries which famously starred Tim Curry as the traumatizing dancing clown. While that series is beloved by many genre fans who grew up in the 90s and Curry’s performance is still regarded as one of the best in all of horror, the miniseries itself hasn’t aged the best. That’s where the 2017 reboot comes in and, similarly to the book and the miniseries, it became an insane pop culture moment for a new breed of horror fans. It made over $700 million worldwide which landed it as a top 5 highest-grossing rated-R film of all time.
Smartly the film only covered half the story, the Derry kid’s younger years, which left a lot of room for the sequel to run wild in 2019. While Chapter 2 focused on the children as adults with Pennywise returning after they were defeated 27 years prior, the film was at a disadvantage because it was telling what most fans consider the weakest part of the story. That being said, Chapter 2 still managed to be a scary good time at the movies and was another major hit for WB. This led King’s other works to be remade like Pet Sematary and Firestarter, but the town of Derry has so much untapped potential. That only makes this prequel series more exciting as Derry has one of the most tragic backstories in genre history.
While horror fans anxiously wait for 2024 to return to Derry, you can view the 2017 IT trailer down below.