IT Prequel Series Welcome to Derry Finds Showrunners

By Patrick Cavanaugh

A prequel TV series to the recent adaptation of Stephen King's IT was announced earlier this year, with Variety confirming today that the project has found its showrunners in Jason Fuchs and Brad Caleb Kane. The new series is, more specifically, set before the events of the 2017 IT and 2019 IT CHAPTER TWO from director Andy Muschietti, with him and his sister Barbara Muschietti serving as producers on the new series. The outlet confirms HBO Max has given the new series a production commitment, despite the status of a number of streaming projects overall on the platform being up in the air in recent months.

The series is said to be taking place in the 1960s, prior to The Losers Club establishing their friendship, and will also explore the origins of the demonic Pennywise. Given that the monster was said to emerge every 27 years, that leaves decades of stories to explore in the series and how the monster's violence went unstopped for so long.

One of the last updates about the project came over the summer, with writer Shelley Meals confirming that they had begun work in the series' writers' room. Meals shared on Twitter, "First day of WELCOME TO DERRY writers' room! We float down here." The tweet also included a creepy photo from the offices of the series featuring the ominous red balloon that was known to lure children to become victims of Pennywise.

With the writers' room having opened over the summer and with the series enlisting showrunners, it seems likely that production on the series could be moving forward relatively soon. Other than unfolding in the same city as the IT films, it seems unlikely that the project will have any direct connections to the protagonists of those movies.

Fans will have a lot of questions about the upcoming series, but one question we do know the answer to is whether King himself will have any input on the project.

"Well, I don't have a relationship to Pennywise now," King shared with The Losers Club podcast. "Because I have no intention of going back to IT... it's in the hands of people who are doing this... Andy and Barbara [Muschietti] are going to do Welcome to Derry, they're talking about it anyway. And they've got sort of a handshake deal, I think, with HBO Max."

Even if he's not directly involved in that project, the author is seemingly as excited as fans are.

"It's an interesting possibility to do that. They talked about a prequel. Which struck me as an okay idea," the author recalled. "I'd love to see what Pennywise was up to 27 years before the '50s. Or, I guess it would be the '80s, because they updated the [setting]. So it would be, you know, before World War II or something. It'll be interesting to see what will happen with that."

Stay tuned for details on Welcome to Derry.

Are you looking forward to the new series? Let us know in the comments or contact Patrick Cavanaugh directly on Twitter to talk all things Star Wars and horror!

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