If you are expecting Stephen King to write more books featuring Pennywise the Clown (aka IT), don’t hold your breath. King made it clear in a conversation that when it comes to his writing, he’s done playing in the IT universe. After the success of Warner Bros.’ two-part IT movie adaptation, it was announced that a prequel series called Welcome to Derry is being developed for HBO Max. Naturally, that series being announced has a lot of horror fans wondering if and/or how much Stephen King will be involved in Welcome to Derry. Now King is making it clear: he’s not involved at all.
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Stephen King clarified his involvement in Welcome to Derry, as well as any future IT projects while talking with Bloody Disgusting’s The Losers Club Podcast:
Well, I don’t have a relationship to Pennywise now,” King said. “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.”
The premise of Welcome to Derry will look back at the town of Derry years before The Losers Club met the demonic entity, and chronicle how Pennywise came to haunt the town for nearly three decades. While you may think that only the man who created Pennywise could tell the beginning of his story, Stephen King is actually looking forward to this as a fan:
“It’s an interesting possibility to do that. They talked about a prequel. Which struck me as an okay idea. 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 2 or something. It’ll be interesting to see what will happen with that.”
It was fair for fans to assume that Stephen King could be involved with Welcome to Derry – or working on some writing material that could be adapted into the TV series. After all, King did write a modern sequel to one of his most iconic works: the 2013 horror novel Doctor Sleep, which was the sequel to The Shining. Doctor Sleep was adapted into a film by Warner Bros. and released in 2019 right on the back of the two IT movies. It seemed like WB was interested in hopping into a cinematic “Kingverse” of content, and Welcome to Derry is just an expansion of that goal, really.
Still: it will be interesting to see how the IT prequel show turns out, without Stephen King involved at all.
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