Zazie Beetz does not appear to be enjoying a restful hotel stay in the blood-soaked trailer for the forthcoming horror-comedy feature They Will Kill You.
They Will Kill You centers on a newly hired housekeeper (Beetz) at a mysterious New York City hotel known as the Virgil. She soon learns that the building is the headquarters for a satanic cult, with the members having chosen to murder her as a sacrifice.
In the trailer, Beetz gets this chilling warning: “This building is a temple to Satan. Each month, we must pay with a human sacrifice. Tonight, you are the offering.”
Later, a character asks Beetz, “Where did you learn how to fight like that?” She responds by nonchalantly saying, “Prison.”
Sokolov helmed the film from a script he co-wrote with Alex Litvak. Hailing from New Line Cinema and Nocturna, They Will Kill You counts Andy Muschietti, Barbara Muschietti and Dan Kagan as producers. Litvak and Sokolov executive produce the project alongside Russell Ackerman, John Schoenfelder and Carl Hampe.
The Hollywood Reporterexclusively reported in August 2024 that Arquette and Felton had joined the movie’s cast.
Beetz can currently be seen opposite André Holland and Kate Mara in The Dutchman, which hit theaters over the weekend. She also has a role in Gore Verbinski’s feature Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die, set for theatrical release next month.
HBO’s genre dramas are often a big deal, and so far, Welcome to Derryis no exception.
Per the Hollywood Reporter, the first episode of the It prequel amassed 5.7 million cross-platform viewers over three days. It’s the third-biggest series debut in HBO history, coming behind the pilots for 2022’s House of the Dragon andThe Last of Us in 2023. In their first days alone, Dragon had nearly 10 million viewers, while Last had 4.7 million viewers and gained plenty more over the three-day period. (The finale to Last’s first season alone almost reached the same numbers as Dragon’s premiere.)
Most Welcome to Derry viewers caught onto the premiere after its initial Sunday night airing. Despite the show’s solid reviews, the episode itself caught attention online with its bloody ending, and it helped that it premiered shortly before Halloween. That twist took a lot of people by surprise—including HBO, as it turns out—and will likely get seats in butts for the remainder of the season.
Since Halloween fell on a Friday this year, the second Derry episode launched on HBO Max ahead of usual Sunday timeslot. HBO also released the show’s intro, made by production studio Filmograph. In a separate THR interview, executive producer/director Andy Muschietti called the title sequence a “descent into dread” as it features Pennywise luring in kids or observing chaotic events throughout the town’s history. The sequence “reflects our desire to show the big catastrophic events” referenced in Stephen King’s novel, continued Muschietti, and further leaned into Derry being “a place that’s seemingly wholesome, but there’s something dreadful under the surface.”
You can read more about the sequence’s creation here, and it’ll play before new episodes of Welcome to Derry every Sunday.
Stephen King hasn’t always been supportive of adaptations of his works that make major changes to them—Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining is the best-known example. But he’s also not unilaterally opposed to alterations; he was a fan of Cujo‘s more upbeat ending and was an even bigger fan of The Mist‘s far more devastating conclusion. Most recently, he gave a thumbs-up to the new finale of Edgar Wright’s Running Man.
And though It: Welcome to Derry is taking some liberties with one of his most beloved novels, building out a prequel for Pennywise and the Maine town terrorized by the evil clown, King gave the creators of HBO’s new series the green light.
“Well, we’re very happy, obviously, [to have] the blessing of Stephen King, who inspired this in the first place,” Andy Muschietti—an executive producer and director of several Welcome to Derry episodes; he also directed the two It feature films—said in a roundtable interview attended by io9. “[He’s] our biggest literary hero. It’s just phenomenal. That has been consistent all through this journey. He was very, very excited about this exploration, which departs so much—a lot of Welcome to Derry is taken from the book, but there’s a lot of storylines that are more of an answer to his questions. And that was like a kind of a leap of faith for us when we started this. And he was, you know, he was open and eager to see where we were going.”
Muschietti and his collaborator and sister Barbara Muschietti doubled down on that excitement in an interview with the Hollywood Reporter, noting the author didn’t take an active hand in shaping Welcome to Derry‘s story.
“Stephen didn’t approach the show like that,” Andy Muschietti explained. “He wasn’t imposing any kind of guidelines on us. I think his desire was to let us play with his toys because from the beginning, we were clear to him. We said, ‘Your book is a mystery. It’s a puzzle and left unsolved intentionally. And we’re going to create a lot of stuff to bring those enigmas, and also to fill in the gaps in the puzzle.’ Eventually, this creates a story that’s not in the book. It’s a hidden story.”
Added Barbara Muschietti, “We wanted to do a show that basically went backwards, where each season was a cycle of Pennywise and he loved that concept and gave us all the rope we needed.”
As Stephen King fans well know, Pennywise the Dancing Clown emerges every 27 years to feast on the people of Derry, especially the younger generation. That’s why It: Welcome to Derry takes place in 1962, 27 years before the 1989 events of Andy Muschietti’s 2017 It feature film, and 54 years before the 2016 setting of It Chapter Two.
The early ‘60s setting allows It: Welcome to Derry to tap into the broader cultural climate of the era, drawing on issues like the civil rights movement and Cold War dread. io9 recently participated in a press day for the new HBO show ahead of its arrival on October 26, speaking with Muschietti (a co-creator and executive producer on the series, in addition to being the director of multiple episodes) as well as writers, executive producers, and co-showrunners Brad Caleb Kane and Jason Fuchs.
“[1962] is part of the story because we are telling the story through Pennywise cycles. So it was unavoidable to go to ‘62; this is our first step into a bigger journey,” explained Muschietti. “Segregation was still around; racial problems [were] at the heart of every town in America, especially the South, but also in the North, as we see in Maine, in the story. And the Cold War [too].”
He continued. “It was actually exciting to talk about these things because it creates not only a look into history, but also dramatic opportunities [for] our characters … Also, ‘62 is very close to the original time [setting] of It, the book. When we did the movie adaptation, we transferred it to the ‘80s. And now we’re telling a prequel that happened in ‘62, but ‘62 is very close to 1958, which is [when the novel takes place]. So it’s a bit of going back to the original feeling of the book and trying to explore a little bit of that world with its own flavors and textures, and also the childhood of Stephen King.”
Kane elaborated on the setting in a separate interview with io9. “You can’t tell a story about an interdimensional being that exploits people’s fears in 1962 without addressing the great fears of the time and the great troubles of the time. We leaned into it,” he said.
“And 1962 is very much considered a time of Norman Rockwell’s America; it’s a time that’s idealized with great innocence. Obviously it wasn’t that way for everybody, but if you think of 1962 in America, before Kennedy was assassinated, as the last moment of innocence in this country, well, what happens when you scratch the surface of that innocence, that idealized time, and you find out what’s underneath? I think you’ll see something very different than the facade, and we tried to lean into that reality as well.”
While most of the show takes place in 1962, it also takes time to explore the deeper history of the Derry area. The local Native American population plays a major role in the new series, bringing in a perspective not represented in King’s original story or any of its previous adaptations.
“They’re the first people that met the monster, and they play a crucial role in the fight against it,” Muschietti teased. “There’s a part of the story that is not even in the book that is a crucial story point in this series, which tells us about the struggle of the Indigenous people against It, and that has tremendous ripple effects on generations to come.”
Kane expanded on why the Indigenous storyline was so important to include in It: Welcome to Derry. “We wanted to go back to the origins of the creature—and we wanted to talk about the stewards of the land. The Indigenous people have lived with this evil much longer than anybody else, having been here longer than anyone else, and they understand that evil is not something that you can necessarily defeat,” he said.
“It’s a constant; it’s a reality in life. It needs to be addressed; it needs to be confronted and understood, most importantly, and in lieu of destroying it, it needs to be contained properly. And that’s what the Indigenous people in Derry seek to do in the story. So we felt that was an important perspective. And obviously, if we’re thinking about Derry as a microcosm of America, you can’t tell America’s story without the Indigenous perspective. And I think that was an important reason for us to do it.”
While the Indigenous characters form a key part of It: Welcome to Derry, the show also aims for a microcosm feel—as Kane suggested, noting King originated the idea of looking at Derry through that lens. We spend time with the kids as they realize there’s a monster in their midst. But we also get to know their parents and other adults in town, as well as the soldiers stationed on the military base nearby. It’s a lot of cards to stack, but co-showrunners Kane and Fuchs didn’t see it as a challenge.
“I think we saw it much more as an opportunity,” Fuchs said. “TV is obviously long-form storytelling and so we had a chance to delve into different perspectives in a way that the two hours of a movie just doesn’t allow you to. We were really excited to get to see grown-up characters who were more aware of the entity than the grown-ups we meet in the context of the films. We were excited to go into different communities. We hadn’t really seen Derry or It through the perspective of the Indigenous community, and it was an opportunity to also get a group of characters at the center of this, the Hanlon family, who are new to Derry, to really provide a way in for new fans who maybe haven’t read the book or seen the films. We have a family at the core of this adventure who are being introduced to the world of Derry themselves for the first time. It was all by design and something we’re really excited about; it felt like this was an opportunity for something a little different.”
While the show draws on a fair amount of new material, the fact that it’s a prequel means viewers have a good idea of what happens next—including the fact that Pennywise has more cycles on the way. Crafting a satisfying ending for viewers who already know the monster won’t be defeated took a certain nuanced approach.
“The benefit of long-form storytelling is really that you can dive into character a lot more deeply. And we’re introducing a whole new set of characters in this than we saw in the movies,” Kane said. “But we try to rip the rug out from underneath people right away so you never know what’s going to happen. You never know what to expect; you never know who you can come to care for that’s not going to be wrenched away from you. We want to give the audience that feeling: to imbue you with love for these new characters and make you fear for their safety.”
“And really, that’s the ride we’re taking. It’s not necessarily, ‘Will It be defeated in the end or not?’ but ‘Will these characters survive? Will they learn lessons? Will they grow up? Will the parents see their children again? Will the evil plan that’s being hatched as the engine of this piece be enacted in some way, or will that snap back on the person enacting it?’”
Kane continued. “We wanted to tell a story about unity and about innocence lost, just like the main themes of the book. Growing up and realizing that fear and hatred and all that stuff can only be really defeated through community and through love and through growth. We try to do all that with the characters, and that kind of journey makes it a lot more expansive than just, ‘Will It be defeated or not?’ We’re trying to paint a story on a much larger canvas.”
It: Welcome to Derry expands what fans know about Pennywise’s history in quite a few aspects, but it’s careful not to shine too bright of a light on things. As Fuchs explained, revealing details but also keeping some of that mystery intact was a delicate task.
“It was a constant balancing act—how much to reveal, how much to keep hidden. I think that what’s great about the richness of Stephen King’s mythology is that the more answers to mysteries you reveal, the more new mysteries suggest themselves,” Fuchs said. “So yeah, Brad and I wanted to know more about It. We wanted to understand why a being like It remains in Derry when it’s a creature of light. It could travel anywhere. Why Derry? We wanted to understand why a shape-shifter who has a virtually infinite number of forms it could take continues to take the form of Pennywise the Dancing Clown.”
“So you’re going to get, I hope, really satisfying answers to some of those things in the context of the show. But the answers themselves suggest fresh mysteries and new questions. And that’s part of the fun of the genre and of Stephen King’s mythology. You can always go deeper and deeper.”
We’re just a few weeks away from the arrival of It: Welcome to Derry, but fans at San Diego Comic-Con this summer and this past weekend’s New York Comic Con have gotten some early glimpses of what to expect from the Stephen King series. At SDCC, HBO revealed the show’s very first scene, and io9 was lucky enough to be there—though we’ve been haunted by it ever since.
With It: Welcome to Derry‘s premiere dropping October 26, everyone will soon get to feast their eyeballs on the harrowing sequence. And It and It Chapter Two helmer Andy Muschietti, co-creator of the HBO series as well as the director of several episodes, is here to explain/warn you about the thinking behind its opening.
“We wanted to raise the bar higher in terms of shock value,” Muschietti told Deadline. “It’s about a self-imposed mandate of opening with an event that is shocking enough that you put the audience in a position where nothing is taken for granted, where nothing is safe in this world.”
He continued. “You’re immediately putting people on the edge of the seat. We needed a strong opening. One of the things I love about this scene is the build-up. Of course, it has a big, graphic, and shocking conclusion, but the build-up is something that was important.”
That’s quite a build-up to the build-up—but we’re here to tell you the scene does not disappoint. io9 will have more from Andy Muschietti and his producing partner and sister Barbara Muschietti, as well as other cast and crew of It: Welcome to Derry, as the hour of Pennywise approaches.
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According to Deadline, Skarsgård will also executive produce the show along with his fellow It film franchise creative team at Warner Bros. The show was inspired by the Stephen King novel It and was developed by the franchise’s director Andy Muschietti with producer Barbara Muschietti. They’re also joined by Chapter Two co-producer Jason Fuchs with the films’ other producers, Roy Lee and Dan Lin. Now with Skarsgård in the mix, we’re excited for more horror in the prequel series. Muschietti is set to direct four episodes out of the nine in the series order.
Recently, Bill Skarsgård starred in Boy Kills World and will be featured as Eric Draven in the upcoming The Crow reboot, while Andy Muschietti remained in the Warner Bros. family with The Flash. Needless to say, we are excited to see them team up again with more world-building and creepy killer clownery in the Stephen King universe. Their take on It has become the quintessential one garnering $1.17 billion worldwide. And in an age with ever-expanding mythologies, characters like Pennywise can keep floating on in horror infamy as long as he wants.
DC’sBatgirl was an important part of how the old model of DC films before James Gunn was going to work. Like The Flash, it included Micheal Keaton returning as Batman, and it was expected to continue the old DC movie universe.
Unfortunately, the film is never going to see the light of day. Despite being almost completely finished, the higher-ups over at Warner Bros. decided they’d be better off scrapping the whole project than releasing it, as originally intended, on the Max streaming service. This reportedly allowed them to claim $90 million dollars as a tax write-off. The reasons cited were that it was a cost-cutting measure and part of their shift back towards theatrical releases. By the time it was finished, it also sounded like maybe they didn’t have faith that it could make back its budget.
Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah recently sat down with Insider to talk about how they’re feeling now that they’ve had a little bit of time to reflect on the decision.
“It’s the biggest disappointment of our careers,” said El Arbi, while Fallah added “There’s still a feeling of unfinished business.”
“We didn’t get the chance to show Batgirl to the world and let the audience judge for themselves,” El Arbi opined. “Because the audience really is our ultimate boss and should be the deciders of if something is good or bad, or if something should be seen or not.”
The pair also noted they watched The Flash — the movie that was supposed to lead into Batgirl — and were “sad … We love director Andy Muschietti and his sister Barbara, who produced the movie. But when we watched it, we felt we could have been part of the whole thing.”
Despite the whole mess, the directors aid they “could never say no to another project” in the DC world if something came up.
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“I’m Andy Muschietti, and I’m the director of ‘The Flash.’ O.K., so this is part of the opening of the movie. It’s a scene where Barry Allen is summoned. Barry Allen is played in this movie by the great Ezra Miller. He gets a call from Alfred to come to Gotham, because he needs to assist Batman.” “Alfred. You hear that? That’s my stomach.” “And he’s arriving late to work. And ironically, he’s being the fastest man alive, he arrives late everywhere. This is something that all the fans know very well. So in the original script, there was a scene with a volcano. I thought that we needed something a little stronger to start with. So I came up with this scene where a bunch of babies are thrown into the void. And Flash has to do something about it. What I wanted is to put our superhero to a test. I wanted to put his superpowers to the test, and basically explaining that even if you are the fastest man alive, you can have trouble saving different people at the same time. So what happens is basically, he has to save nine babies that are not only falling. But also because he didn’t have breakfast, his calories are going down. So everything starts to speed up. That’s the other narrative gimmick that we’re having, that we’re basically seeing the events from his perspective. And when he’s in full energy, everything seems to be frozen in time. But when his calories go down, meaning that he doesn’t have fuel enough to be at the top of his capacities, everything starts to get faster. And this is what he does.” [BABY CRYING] “We think he’s going to go for the baby.” [BABY WAILING] “And instead, he goes and destroys a vending machine with the objective of getting enough calories to get his powers back.” [INTENSE MUSIC PLAYING] “But it definitely sets up a superhero that is vulnerable, that even though he has superpowers, he’s not invincible. And he has to basically recur to his intelligence and his human criteria and judgment, not only on his superpowers.” [WHOOSHING] [BANGING] “I really wanted Ezra to play all the shots where they are portraying Flash in the scene. And they were very eager to do the stunts as well. So basically every time that you see Ezra on the scene, it’s a practical moment. Obviously when you’re in post-production, you have to make some decisions that basically favor a more spectacular version of the shot, in which you have to go full CG. But in most scenes that you see Barry, it’s Ezra performing it with, of course, a set extension that is digital. So Ezra was hanging on wires during a lot of days to basically bring this scene to life, with that nurse hanging on wires. And no baby was harmed in the production of this scene, and voila.” [BABIES CRYING] [WOMAN SCREAMING]
Andy Muschietti, director of “The Flash”, is returning to the DC Universe.
Varietyis reporting that Muschietti’s next project will be a big one, the upcoming Batman reboot “Batman: The Brave and the Bold”.
While early reviews for “The Flash” have been mixed, box office projections are predicting a $70 million opening weekend domestically, while international ticket sales are expected to be somewhere between $155-$165 million.
According to Variety, “Batman: The Brave and the Bold” is based on Grant Morrison’s DC comic book series, in which Bruce Wayne’s biological son Damian fights crime alongside his dad’s Batman as the new Robin.
Muschietti’s sister and creative partner Barbara Muschietti is onboard as producer.
“We saw ‘The Flash’ even before taking the reins at DC Studios, and knew we were in the hands of not only a visionary director but a massive DC fan,” DC Studios heads James Gunn and Peter Safran told Variety of Muschietti. “It’s a magnificent film — funny, emotional, thrilling — and Andy’s affinity and passion for these characters and this world just resonates through every frame. So, when it came time to find a director for ‘The Brave and the Bold’, there was really only one choice. Luckily, Andy said yes. Barbara signed on to produce with us and we were on our way. They’re an extraordinary team, and we couldn’t have better or more inspiring partners as we embark on this thrilling new adventure in the DCU.”
Getting Keaton to return would take some persuasion. “We took him out to lunch—and we paid,” Barbara Muschietti joked, alluding to both the restaurant check and Keaton’s own payday. “He is the most energetic human being you’ll ever meet. It’s insane. And actually, one of the missions is, when you had him on set, you had to be on the ball one hundred percent, and keeping him busy, because you don’t want that man bored.”
The Muschiettis said they dined at an Italian restaurant in Keaton’s neighborhood. “Andy and I are sitting there, a little nervous,” she said. “He’s very healthy. He’s a nuts, and seeds, and chicken and broccoli kind of man. He came in jogging and sat down. We had food. He rolled the script literally under his arm and left jogging as well. So, Andy and I after the meeting are like, ‘We have Batman…? Do we?’ And we did.”
Keaton’s return came with a lot of emotional baggage for the actor, she added. “Michael hadn’t put on the suit for 30 years, and actually, the last time he had put on the suit, Sean, his son, who’s now a talented music producer with his own family, was a little kid. So, he put on his suit—and the guy looked fucking great.”
The Flash costume designer Alexandra Byrne also devised a Batman suit that looked similar to what Keaton wore in the 1989 film while also solving one of its biggest practical problems. “He made a suit where this guy could actually move his neck, and lift his leg.”
“That old suit was impossible to wear,” Andy Muschietti said. “[Keaton] was very frustrated because he couldn’t move his neck or anything. The design was perfect, but it’s very often in movies that the better a suit looks, the more uncomfortable it is. I did that. This Flash has a suit that is impossible to wear.”
Another emotional moment behind the scenes involved Keaton’s grandchild. “The first scene that we shoot, where he’s wearing the full suit, he’s like, ‘Can you take a picture? It’s for my grandson,’” Andy Muschietti said. “It filled me with [shivers]…I have goosebumps right now.”
“Basically he got to show his tiny grandkid that he was Batman. It was truly amazing,” Barbara Muschietti said.
“He’s a guy who doesn’t show his emotions a lot, but you could tell,” Andy Muschietti said. “We built the entire Batcave on one of the biggest sets at Leavesden Studios, which is the Warner Bros stages in London. Except for the full waterfall that goes down, it’s all entirely practical. And when Keaton arrived to the set, the Batcave was already finished, and it was lit and everything.”
He said Keaton stood alone, overlooking it all. “He stayed like this for a while. I didn’t want to interrupt him or anything, I just wanted for him to take it in,” the director said. “Who knows what was going on there, but something was going on there.”
Sequel Potential
Will there be a follow-up to The Flash, or given the restructuring of the DC universe at Warner Bros., will this version of the character be put aside?
“We didn’t talk about it. I think that we’re all waiting to see how this movie does. Of course, there’s excitement about continuing the story, especially if this movie is successful,” Andy Muschietti said. “There’s an architecture in DC that is brewing, and it’s being created, and the question is, will this new architecture absorb this story? The good thing about the multiverse is that it is possible. The multiverse allows all of these different worlds to coexist and interact. And so, hopefully yes. We don’t know yet. That’s the truth.”
Batman: The Brave and the Bold — the first new Batman film in DC Studios’ impending new movie universe — is going to be a huge project. Luckily, DC is reportedly closing in on a huge director to work on the film.
Andy Muschietti seems to be in the lead, which makes sense, given he just directed The Flash, which features not one but two Batmen, played by Ben Affleck and Michael Keaton. Somehow, even after all the trials and travails the film has been through, it’s pleased the studio. The Flash has been through what can only be described as development hell. It’s had multiple delays, production difficulties, reshoots, and the personal issues of its star, Ezra Miller. Despite all of that, it seems, the movie is actually good. DC Studios co-CEO James Gunn even called it “one of the best superhero movies ever.”
Perhaps that’s why, according to THR, Muschietti seems to be “the top choice to direct the Batman feature,” The Brave and the Bold. If he can juggle the strange multiversal shifts of The Flash, he should have no issues navigating the weird family dynamic of the Bat-Family.
Based on its title and subject — the relationship between Batman and his son, Damian Wayne — the movie is thought to be based on Grant Morrison’s Batman comics run from 2006-2012. Morrison’s comics can sometimes get a little strange, but Muschietti is no stranger to the strange. He started his career when Guillermo del Toro found his short film and hopped on to produce a feature-length studio version. That film became Mama. From there, he directed It and It: Chapter 2. And now he’s got a potential blockbuster on his hands with The Flash. It opens in theaters on June 16.
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