It: Welcome to Derrywrapped up its first season earlier this week, and while horror hounds wait to hear whether HBO will make good on that “Chapter One” end-title card and announce a “Chapter Two,” NECA has revealed another figure from the show to add to your Pennywise collection. Step right up, children: this clown is ready to feast on you and all your friends!
As fans of the show well remember, the Bill Skarsgård-portrayed character was just about to slink into 27 years of slumber when the U.S. Air Force made the genius decision to leave a gaping hole in the cosmic “cage” that’s been keeping him contained for centuries.
Most of his body has already submerged into his hibernation muck—but Pennywise’s eyes snap open when he gets a whiff of freedom. His encore rampage through 1962 Derry features a gruesome makeover, since he’s now stained a ruddy color from the cheeks down—the collective blood and guts of his victims, presumably.
The detail here is immaculate, and by that we mean repulsive (in the best way). Here are more looks at the figure:
“From the twisted world of Stephen King and the HBO series IT: Welcome to Derry, NECA unleashes Ultimate Blood Pennywise!,” NECA’s site, where you can pre-order the figure, exclaims. “The nightmare-inducing Dancing Clown is back to terrorize Derry—and your shelf—as a fully articulated Ultimate action figure. Standing in 7-inch scale, Pennywise features gruesome, blood-soaked deco and interchangeable heads and hands. Comes in collector-friendly window box packaging with opening front flap.”
Of course he comes with a balloon! All this is missing is another alternate head exposing Pennywise’s many, many rows of teeth poised to strike, though we wouldn’t be surprised if NECA is working on one of those.
He’ll set you back $38 and is estimated to ship in the second quarter of 2026.
In the most recent episode of It: Welcome to Derry, we saw various characters—heavily armed Air Force guys, a member of the local Indigenous community wielding an alien dagger, and a group of awkward young teens—slip into the sewers under 29 Neibolt Street in search of you-know-who. We know they’re chasing an entity that delights in taking the form of Pennywise the Dancing Clown; at this point in Welcome to Derry‘s storyline, however, nobody’s quite certain what they’re looking for. They just know it’s got mind-control powers and is propelled by pure evil.
One of those Air Force guys happens to be Dick Hallorann (Chris Chalk), who’s been singled out by the military for this unconventional mission thanks to his psychic powers. Stephen King fans are already very familiar with this character, especially because of Scatman Crothers’ enduring performance as an older Hallorann in Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 adaptation of The Shining. In Welcome to Derry, we’ve gotten to know the younger Hallorann. He’s cockier and a bit more tightly wound, and he’s learned to keep the scarier aspects of his gifts under control—to a point.
As episode five, “29 Neibolt Street,” reveals, It worms into Hallorann’s mind to exploit his memories of his abusive grandfather. Hallorann and his grandmother, who also had psychic powers, cower as his grandfather looms over them, cruelly taunting them. Then, the worst thing Hallorann can imagine happens: the elderly man, who’s really Pennywise in disguise, opens the box and frees all the horrors Hallorann’s been very carefully tucking away.
In the vision, the mental creation appears as a real box, filled with an orange glow just like Pennywise’s deadlight eyes.
When a dazed Hallorann emerges from the sewer at the end of the episode, he sees Pauly (Rudy Mancuso), a soldier who was killed moments earlier in the tunnel. He should not be up and walking, but he is—and Hallorann can quite clearly see him.
Welcome to Derry hasn’t yet given much context around Hallorann’s mental lockbox beyond just showing it to us—and making sure we understand that opening it was a very bad thing. Clearly, it’s something Hallorann is going to have to work through if he wants to be a functional person again. But the box exists in previous material introduced about the character, notably King’s Shining sequel Doctor Sleep.
In the 2019 Mike Flanagan movie version, Carl Lumbly plays a ghostly version of the character who appears to Danny Torrance (not long after the events at the Overlook) with some helpful advice. About… mental boxes. You can find Doctor Sleep on Netflix now to watch the scene in full, but it includes a callback to Hallorann’s famous line from The Shining about how the dark things that Danny can perceive with his “shining” powers can’t physically hurt him. They’re like “pictures in a book.”
The old man also tells Danny that dark things will flock to him because of his abilities. There’s nothing he can do to stop them from coming. “My grandfather, he was a mean son of a bitch,” he explains. “When he died, I danced… but he kept on coming back.”
Hallorann pulls out a small box and says that his grandmother taught him a trick. “I want you to know this box inside and out,” he tells the boy; earlier in the movie, we’d seen that Danny is still being haunted by the creepy ghost from room 237. “You’re gonna build one just like it in your mind. One even more special. So next time that bitch comes around, you’ll be ready.”
He’ll be ready to trap the ghost and all its adjacent negativity and bad vibes in his mental box, in other words. It’s a great idea, and perhaps this version of Hallorann didn’t have to deal with what our guy in Welcome to Derry is going through now. What’s going to happen with all the clingy spirits who come calling now?
Speaking to Decider, Chalk and It: Welcome to Derry co-showrunner Jason Fuchs shared a little more insight into Hallorann’s trauma.
“All the terror that he has ever seen, he just slipped it in the box, slipped it in the box, slipped it in the box,” Chalk explained about his character. “So the moment you unleash that, it’s not going to come out as gently as Dick put it in and it’s not happy about being shoved in a box. These are not entities that want to be trapped. And so when they can break free, they do, and it changes Dick forever.”
Added Fuchs, “That very last shot you see of Dick, of Chris Chalk, in [episode five] of him seeing dead Pauly in front of him on the bank of the river, that is going to take Dick to some extremely dark places, to a place he’s tried to get away from. There’s a reason he wanted to keep that box shut. His life by the end of episode five has been fully upended in ways that will take him to the breaking point and possibly past [it] in the episodes to come.”
New episodes of It: Welcome to Derry arrive Sundays on HBO and HBO Max.
At long last, this week’s episode of It: Welcome to Derry gave fans what they’d been waiting for: Pennywise the Dancing Clown in full circus regalia, complete with glowing eyes and way too many pointy teeth. The big moment was well worth it, and even if it felt like episode five was a long time to hold out on It‘s signature villain, the show’s creative team—which includes Barbara Muschietti, Andy Muschietti, Brad Caleb Kane, and Jason Fuchs—has often spoken about why they wanted to build that anticipation. But now that Pennywise is here, what’s next?
For starters: more details about his past, beyond what we already know about the asteroid thanks to the It movies and Stephen King’s book, not to mention earlier episodes of Welcome to Derry. Speaking to TV Guide, Fuchs promised “a lot of Pennywise” moving forward, with Kane teasing, “He’s in! He’s another character,” meaning Welcome to Derry‘s already large ensemble is simply going to have to make room for more.
If you watched the teaser for episode six, which arrives Sunday on HBO, you might have spotted a familiar face: Bill Skarsgård, not in his Pennywise greasepaint, but instead in the guise of Pennywise’s most notable human form: “Bob Gray.” He pops up in King’s book, but Welcome to Derry aims to dig even deeper into what he means to the story.
“Certainly, when we talk about the mysteries we’re excited to discover, we’re excited to understand why the shapeshifter has chosen to return, time and again, to the form of Pennywise,” Fuchs told TV Guide. “And what was that first encounter with Bob Gray? What did that look like? Who is Bob Gray? We have a lot of whys we want answers to, and the story of Bob Gray and the story of Pennywise are certainly in that bucket. So without spoiling anything in those final episodes, you’re going to see that mystery looked into in a really serious way.”
But what will Bob Gray’s chompers look like? Find out on It: Welcome to Derry, which drops new episodes Sundays on HBO and HBO Max.
There have been two episodes of It: Welcome to Derry, and Pennywise is taking his sweet time to make his entrance as dramatic and traumatic as possible.
In io9’s recent chat with the minds behind the show, which expands the Stephen King It universe, Jason Fuchs (writer, producer, and co-showrunner) shared that they “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.” He also said that fans can expect to get “really satisfying answers to some of those things in the context of the show. But the answers themselves suggest fresh mysteries and new questions.” Since they were given free rein by King himself to do whatever they want, we’re anxious to see how much new input they’re putting into the horror legend’s scariest creation.
So far we have so many questions! The first couple episodes truly play with the expectations of how It is perceived, playing tricks on the audience’s minds as well as its young characters. It begins with that gnarly birthing scene where the fleshy demon bat baby comes out to feast on the children of Derry, starting with Matty Clements. This grotesque incarnation makes us wonder if it’s just It awakening from its cyclical slumber in the most dramatic way possible or if it’s reborn every time and quickly evolves into a bigger form the more kids it claims.
By the end of the episode, it goes from the size of an eagle to a bigger creature when it takes out half the kids that were introduced. This isn’t Stranger Things; we at least get the sense that no one is safe. Everyone in Derry who has a fair share of darkness and trauma is game for It. And that point is made very clearly as we meet new characters.
In episode two, the surviving girls, Lilly (Clara Stack) and Ronnie (Amanda Christine), are preyed on through It taking the forms of their dead parents. Not as a clown, but instead giving Ronnie the major retraumatization of being birthed by a demonic version of her mom, who passed away when she was born. Likewise, Lilly faces her father in the form of It, taking pieces of him in pickle jars to scare her. But again, it raises a lot of ideas of how It decides to masquerade. Was It really the demon mom or pickled, dead daddy? Or were these just projections it could manipulate? They both disappear instantly; we’re leaning toward more projections than a corporeal outfit that It chooses to take.
Why the entity chooses to don its iconic clown garb has yet to be explored despite marketing bombarding us with Pennywise’s signature look. If we think back on It: Chapter Two, you might recall that there’s a scene where Beverly encounters Pennywise getting ready and looking most definitely like a man putting on clown makeup in a twisted “Get Ready With Me’ moment; we even see It use its fingernails to tear the red lines onto its face.
The trailers tease that the circus or carnival origin story is coming, with glimpses of Skarsgård in his creepy man form without makeup, as we’ve seen in the movies. Hopefully in this Sunday’s episode, we’ll get more lore about Its origin; the entity has been encountered by the Indigenous people around Derry in the past, who have had more knowledge of its presence as an ancient being or alien. Perhaps It body-snatched a carnie after its previous host was destroyed. Because otherwise, why does It go through the effort to put on the face? It can’t be just for funzies, right? If he can just morph into anything, why go through the effort to put on his dancing clown face? It feels like there is an element of having a main form as a corporeal host to unleash its horrors. We are itching to find out more and to see Skarsgård return.
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.
Fans of Stephen King’s IT as well as the two film adaptation installments will be excited to return to the world of Pennywise the clown in prequel series IT: Welcome to Derry.
Developed for television by filmmakers Andy Muschietti and Barbara Muschietti (IT, IT Chapter Two, The Flash) and Jason Fuchs (IT Chapter Two, Wonder Woman, Argylle), the series expands the universe established by Andy Muschietti in the two films. Muschietti directed multiple episodes of the show.
For all the details around IT: Welcome To Derry’s release schedule, read on.
When does IT: Welcome to Derry premiere?
The prequel series arrives Sunday, October 26 at 9 p.m. ET and PT.
How many episodes are in IT: Welcome to Derry?
There will be eight episodes in the show.
Will new episodes of IT: Welcome to Derry premiere weekly or all at once?
New episodes — following the premiere — will arrive weekly on Sunday nights through December 14 when the finale launches. Find the dates of the rollout below:
Sunday, Oct. 26: Episode 1
Sunday, Nov. 2: Episode 2
Sunday, Nov. 9: Episode 3
Sunday, Nov. 16: Episode 4
Sunday, Nov. 23: Episode 5
Sunday, Nov. 30: Episode 6
Sunday, Dec. 7: Episode 7
Sunday, Dec. 14: Episode 8 (FINALE)
Who is in the cast of IT: Welcome to Derry?
The Pennywise prequel series stars Jovan Adepo, Taylour Paige, Chris Chalk, James Remar, Stephen Rider, Madeleine Stowe, Rudy Mancuso, and Bill Skarsgård.
What is IT: Welcome to Derry about?
Set in the titular Maine town in 1962, the show’s trailer teases Leroy (Adepo) and Charlotte Hanlon’s (Paige) move to the “normal” town of Derry after Leroy’s stints on base in the military. The clip then hints that the small town is anything but, with disappearances of children, creepy creatures and more lurking in its past and haunting the present.
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.”
It: Welcome to Derry will be floating into your nightmares very soon, and while the kids—Pennywise’s favorite feast—will be front and center, adult characters also take a prominent role in the story. Most folks we meet have been created for the HBO series, which is set in 1962 and is a prequel to the events of the It movies. But every Stephen King fan who’s ever checked into the Overlook Hotel knows Dick Hallorann.
Chris Chalk (The Newsroom, Shining Girls) plays the psychically gifted character—most famously seen in The Shining—in It: Welcome to Derry. As he told io9 at a recent HBO press day, he’s well aware of the legacy crafted by Scatman Crothers—who memorably portrayed Hallorann in the 1980 Stanley Kubrick movie—as well as Carl Lumbly (in 2019’s Doctor Sleep) and Melvin Van Peebles (in the 1997 Shining miniseries). But he’s here to present his own interpretation of the character.
“In order to create and manifest this version of Dick Halloran, I did observe those performances, but I didn’t—’study’ is too strong a word, because that’s not what we’re doing,” Chalk said. “If we were doing Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining in 2025, then I’m going to study that performance in a different way, but all I have to do is see who he is now and break him down backwards to who he was in an earlier time, and then it becomes about creative freedom and the text. So it’s awesome to have all of these options of people who’ve had their versions of the performance, but just as they had their version, I knew I was going to get my version. Nobody asked me to mimic anybody.”
The younger version of Hallorann that we meet in It: Welcome to Derry is an airman stationed at the Air Force base just outside of town. This particular military installation has a fenced-off “Special Projects” area, where Hallorann’s abilities are pressed into service by General Shaw (James Remar). No spoilers on what they’re trying to accomplish, but Hallorann gets certain privileges due to his unique importance to the mission. The drawback is, all those mental gymnastics take a painful toll.
“I think the fact that Dick is even participating in this [mission] is proof that he’ll do anything to not be trapped,” Chalk said. “The worst thing he could possibly do to himself, he has to ultimately do in order to escape this idea of being trapped by General Shaw. He has to essentially assault himself and reopen trauma and reopen trauma and reopen trauma. But he wants to escape it so bad that he’s like, ‘Okay, I’ll cut myself if it’ll get me out of this.’ It’s a great thing to get to play a person at their weakest, most fragile, and most desperate points. Like, that’s what we want: to get to dig into the depths of a human.”
Elsewhere in the story, we encounter Hank Grogan, played by Stephen Rider (Daredevil, Luke Cage). He’s the single dad of young Ronnie (Amanda Christine) and the projectionist at Derry’s downtown movie theater. Early in It: Welcome to Derry, he’s dragged into some messy drama that ties into the show’s examination of America, circa 1962—a place full of problems even when there’s not a demonic clown in the picture.
Hank is a new character, but Rider had a lot of reference points even without pages from a King novel to consider.
“The thing about backstory is, it’s not like you’re going to tell it,” he explained. “It’s more about being very clear on his point of view and the world that he comes from and what he values. The fact that it’s the 1960s and he grew up in the 1920s and 1930s and where his parents came from, in terms of even slavery—it’s a lot to draw on. And most of us came up, or our parents came up, through the Great Migration. So there were a lot of things that I had access to. But backstories are tricky because they can become very fantastical. So if all of a sudden I’m like, ‘What do I do with this? It sounds good, but I don’t know what I’m doing with this.’ So I had to make sure it served Hank, not just Stephen’s fantastical world.”
More newcomers in It: Welcome to Derry are played by Jovan Adepo (3 Body Problem, The Leftovers) and Taylour Paige (The Toxic Avenger), though their last name is one It fans will recognize: Hanlon. As the show begins, Major Leroy Hanlon has just been transferred to Derry, with his wife, Charlotte, and their son, Will (Blake James), in tow.
Major Hanlon, we soon learn, has a quality that would be unique in any context, but it’s especially intriguing in a haunted place like Derry: he is literally a man without fear.
“It’s something that occurred through a brain injury, and I think it’s something that he wants to disregard every time someone brings it up, because it does recall a moment in his military career that he’s just not wanting to re-experience,” Adepo said. “I spoke to [director] Andy [Muschietti] about the specifics of the injury and what it truly means to be without fear in this town where the show is about being afraid. I leaned more on the side of not being completely immune to fear but just having a higher threshold for it. And if it’s the most guttural fear that I’m immune to, the other sub-elements of fear are heightened as far as, you know, insecurity, worry, doubt, shame, and any of those smaller elements of it. I never played Leroy as he’s just impervious to any type of jarring moments; he’s just able to withstand a bit more unless it’s something that he really, really cares about, which we can assume is his family.”
Charlotte was active in the civil rights movement in Louisiana, where the Hanlons lived before moving to Maine. Leroy would much rather his wife keep a low profile, especially since he’s trying to advance his military career. But Derry has its share of injustices that catch Charlotte’s interest, and it’s hard for her to resist speaking up for what’s right.
“I think she’s kind of bursting at the seams,” Paige said. “Living in that dissonance is very uncomfortable. Like you’re at home vacuuming and thinking about what to make for dinner, but you also have a sense that you have a lot to offer the world, and you’re curious and interested, and nobody really cares because you look like you. It’s a little bit sad, it’s lonely, it’s boredom, and it’s just living in a world that doesn’t respect or value what you have to offer. I think that’s a really tough inner world, so her inner world is challenging and lonely.”
She added, “I think Charlotte knows her husband’s heart is in the right place, but she’s also confronting [him about] defending a country [that hasn’t given us anything back], and that’s challenging. So [part of their marriage is] kind of understanding [that] this is our lives as Black people in 1962 and what opportunity means and how to kind of climb out of what you were born with.”
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.”
It: Welcome to Derry hits HBO October 26, bringing Pennywise the Clown out of the sewer to feast on a new generation of children. It remains to be seen if Derry will rank among the scariest Stephen King adaptations—we have a feeling it might—but there are still plenty of chilling movies and TV releases that draw on King’s prolific output to make your nights as sleepless as possible.
10. Cujo (1983)
Based on King’s 1981 novel about a St. Bernard who transforms from a gentle pooch into a vicious, violent monster after tangling with a rabid bat, the 1983 movie makes a few key plot changes, including softening the ending. However, the movie is still deeply unsettling, with the dangers of being trapped in a car with no water on a scorching day very nearly eclipsing the terror of a stalking beast.
Genre superstar Dee Wallace (The Hills Have Eyes, The Howling, E.T. the Extraterrestrial, Critters) gives a ferocious performance as a mom who’ll do anything to protect her son—one of those “Oscar-ignored” horror turns for the ages.
9. The Monkey (2025)
Osgood Perkins’ take on King’s cursed-toy tale (a short story first released in 1980) leans heavily into pitch-black comedy, but it’s still unnerving between all the nervous chuckling. Estranged since childhood, twin brothers (both played by Theo James) unhappily reunite when the cymbal-crashing simian that destroyed their youth resurfaces—but really, The Monkey’s main purpose is for the viewer to cringe in their seat as the tension builds between kills, each death more gruesomely Rube Goldberg-ian than the last.
8. Creepshow (1982)
We’re playing a little fast and loose with “adaptation” here; King wrote the screenplay, which does adapt a few of his short stories but also features new material. Like The Monkey, it’s a horror comedy—paying loving tribute to the splattery legacy of EC horror comics—but with George A. Romero behind the camera, it also unloads plenty of frights.
King himself stars in one of the anthology’s segments, playing a goofy farmer whose close encounter with a meteor results in some intense, plant-based body horror. But the standout shocks come from the creature horror of “The Crate” and buggy revenge howler “They’ll Creep Up on You.”
7. Salem’s Lot (1979)
Just four years after King’s source-material novel came out, Tobe Hooper (The Texas Chain Saw Massacre) directed what’s still the best screen version of the author’s oft-adapted small-town vampire story. The two-part miniseries digs into not just the bloodsucker takeover, but also why Salem’s Lot—a seemingly idyllic Maine town, not unlike a little place called Derry—is such an ideal setting for a creeping outbreak of evil.
Hooper’s version makes a key alteration, changing the look of King’s head vampire character into something more ghoulish than originally described, but it makes sense—by making the viewer recoil when the unexpected, visually striking image appears. Also, apologies to Sinners, but Salem’s Lot still wins for the most spine-chilling “invite me in” scene of all time.
6. Carrie (1976)
King’s first published novel (1974) became his first adapted work, and not only are we still seeing tons of King adaptations coming every year, Carrie itself has also gone through many iterations (with a Mike Flanagan series on the way as we speak). But Brian De Palma’s film weaves its own spell in ways that’ve never been eclipsed, thanks to Sissy Spacek’s towering lead performance, the effectively jarring use of split-screen to bring the bloody prom scene to life, and one of horror’s best and earliest examples of a jump-scare finale.
5. The Mist (2007)
As this list has already demonstrated, many filmmakers have chosen to alter King’s prose to create a more effective screen story. But nowhere is that more searing and horrifying than in Frank Darabont’s 2007 take on King’s 1980 novella. Darabont, of course, is also the director behind some of the most uplifting King movies ever—The Shawshank Redemption (1994) and The Green Mile (1999)—but The Mist just might be the most feel-bad movie of all time. That’s a testament to the tension it builds and the characters you meet as the titular fog envelops a small Maine community—building up to a devastating ending that will haunt you.
4. It (2017)
We will always love Tim Curry’s Pennywise performance in the 1990 miniseries, but Andy Muschietti’s big-screen adaptation of the first half of King’s sprawling 1986 novel turns the screws in so many dreadfully alarming ways that Bill Skarsgard’s buck-toothed clown is just one fearsome element. Not for nothing is the kid-centric film the more agonizing of Muschietti’s duology; there’s something plainly terrifying about seeing coming-of-age stories that are already backgrounded in depressing home lives compounded by an insatiable supernatural entity.
3. Pet Sematary (1989)
The whole movie could just be furious, tendon-slashing, returned-from-the-grave toddler Gage and the shudder-inducing flashbacks featuring the dreadful Zelda, and it would be top five on this list. That Mary Lambert’s film (adapted from King’s 1983 novel) manages to couch those eerily resonant elements in a movie that constantly teeters on the edge—of despair, sanity, and the next terrible choice made out of sheer hopelessness—is no small achievement.
2. Misery (1990)
The 1987 book is unsettling; the 1990 Rob Reiner movie, starring James Caan as a best-selling author kidnapped by a deranged fan (Kathy Bates), is a thrilling masterpiece. Bates’ well-deserved Oscar for bringing the unhinged Annie Wilkes to life feels like payback for all the horror performances ignored by major awards over the years, and the “hobbling” scene still stings no matter how many times you watch it.
1. The Shining (1980)
King famously disliked Stanley Kubrick’s interpretation of his 1977 novel (speaking of page-to-screen changes, this one’s got quite a few)—but fans of the movie would be forgiven for suspecting the author is the only hater of this cinematic classic. Jack Nicholson’s performance as Jack Torrance is frightening, but it’s the Overlook Hotel itself—its mind tricks, its ghostly inhabitants, its troublesome elevators, its gorgeously nonsensical architecture—that makes the film practically vibrate with evil.
Did we miss your favorite scary King movie or TV show? Share your favorites in the comments.
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.
Horror fans have a pretty good idea of what to expect from Pennywise the Clown. The Stephen King creation takes many forms, but he exists to inspire terror in his victims before demolishing them, and his most effective and recognizable guise involves a frilly costume, glowing eyes, and a mouth full of way too many razor-sharp teeth.
That’s why this new NECA figure tied to HBO’s upcoming prequel seriesIt: Welcome to Derry is so disconcerting. This is not the Pennywise we’re used to running into in the sewers!
First, and most startlingly, the figure shows a human countenance beneath the clown wig. And the face below that receding hairline is… surprisingly gentle-looking?
As NECA’s website reports, this is the It: Welcome to Derry “Ultimate Bob Gray as Pennywise” seven-inch scale action figure. If you’re more of a casual It fan, “Bob Gray” may not ring any bells, but diehards will know the name. And it seems, at least according to NECA, we’ll be meeting him in the flesh in HBO’s new series:
“Before Pennywise was a demonic clown, he was Bob Gray, a circus performer playing a clown onstage. Based on the show’s flashback scenes, this 7-inch scale figure includes multiple interchangeable heads and hands, stage props, flowers, wooden beaver, wig, and wig stand.”
We did know that Welcome to Derry would be tapping into flashbacks to set the scene in Derry, circa 1962, but getting to see Pennywise the Clown before he became entwined with an entity of evil feels like a pretty big reveal. And that’s not all; the figure includes clown faces that make one of horror’s greatest villains appear alternately gentle, sad, and happy.
Here’s all the accessories the “Ultimate Bob Gray as Pennywise” comes with. A clown is not a clown without his sidekick wooden beaver, after all.
Want a Bob Gray of your own to remind you that even child-chomping monsters might not have been such baddies to begin with? You can preorder now ($38, ships in 2026) at NECA’s website.
How big of a spoiler for Welcome to Derry this collectible is remains to be seen, but Pennywise himself—played in the show by the returning Bill Skarsgård—has barely been glimpsed in any of its official marketing thus far.
If you prefer your Pennywise as a bloody beast, NECA has you covered with a far more ghoulish 7″ version available for pre-order here. Less gory but also way bigger at 18″ tall is this take on the balloon-bearing menace.
It: Welcome to Derry premieres October 26 on HBO. Will Bob Gray turn up with his beaver and wig stand? NECA seems pretty sure.
Bill Skarsgård is back as Pennywise for the It prequel Welcome to Derry, and like the movies, the show will use him when the scary situation truly calls for it.
Talking to SFX Magazine, co-showrunner Andy Muschietti likened the clown’s appearances in the show to the shark in Jaws: “It’s very appropriate for a monster that is a shapeshifter to appear in several different shapes and manifestations before he shows up as a clown,” he said. “The idea is building tension around the apparition of a monster that we know already, and people are waiting – when is it going to appear?”
A simple idea, sure, but one Muschietti and his co-showrunner (and sister) Barbara say more than works for Welcome to Derry. The latter called the new creations cooked up for the show “pretty damn incredible” and “so much more” than what’s been seen in the trailers. Since every episode was made to “pack a punch,” the team strived to make these “new incarnations and fears” stand on their own while living up to the level of what was achieved in the two films.
“When [Pennywise] appears, it’s in a big way,” teased Andy Muschietti. He hopes the audience will find it “gratifying” when the cosmic entity does appear on screen, and we’ll see how that trick works when Welcome to Derry premieres October 26 on HBO.
We knew It: Welcome to Derry was arriving in October, but now we know exactly when to start looking for red balloons in the sky and paper boats in the sewer: October 26. Andy Muschietti, Barbara Muschietti, and Jason Fuchs’ expansion of Stephen King’s haunted Maine town as seen in the recent It movies announced the news today with a suitably festive social media post:
io9 got a chance to see the first 10 minutes of It: Welcome to Derry‘s premiere episode at San Diego Comic-Con, and the movie theater is a key backdrop in that opening sequence. If you look closely at the posters advertising what’s playing at the Capitol, you can see it’s The Music Man, a musical about another town with a very different kind of “trouble.” It’s much worse in Derry, where children are targeted by a demonic presence that cycles through once a generation.
It: Welcome to Derry is set in 1962, making it a prequel to the events of Andy Muschietti’s It films, drawing on flashbacks from King’s source-material novel while also expanding the characters and scope of that story. The cast includes Taylour Paige, Jovan Adepo, Chris Chalk, James Remar, Stephen Rider, Madeleine Stowe, and Rudy Mancuso—as well as Bill Skarsgård, reprising his take on Pennywise.
At SDCC, Muschietti explained the idea for the series came while the It movies were in production, with Skarsgård also offering his input.
“We always fantasized about doing the origin story, how ‘It’ becomes Pennywise, which is one of the big mysteries in the book … We loved [the idea of a] TV series because of the opportunities that gives you: a larger canvas to tell the story, more characters, more nuances, and more complicated arcs.”
It: Welcome to Derry hits HBO Max October 26. Will you be tuning in?
