Yet another Stephen King-inspired story is making its way to HBO Max. This time around, it appears that it’s less something that Stephen King wrote and more a prequel based on one of his biggest hits inIT.
For the uninitiated,ITis a story set in the fictional town of Derry, Maine that involves two very different periods of time all centered on a monstrous creature that is able to read people’s minds and make them see whatever it wishes. The creature most often appears to one set of people in Derry as a circus clown that has murderous intent. Having been made into a miniseries in the 1980s,ITalso had two movies madeabout it in the last few years. The movies were two chapters of the same story, with the first chapter set decades ago when a group of kids known as “The Losers Club” first fought the monster while the second chapter was set in “present day” when now-adult club members fought it again, finally putting an end to its reign of terror.
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Now,theItprequel seriestitledWelcome to Derryis in development, according toThe Ankler. The series is supposed to be focusing on “the origin story of Pennywise the Clown” as well as the curse of the monster that set its claws into Derry for so long. It’s also not clear whether this would involve some of the characters who appeared inIT: Chapter OneandIT:Chapter Two, or whether this would be set well in the past. In the films, it’s well established that the creature known as Pennywise came to Derry many decades before The Loser’s Club went toe-to-toe with it.
There are some caveats to the report of the new showgetting its start at HBO Max, the first of which is it not being clear whether the show has been officially greenlit by the streaming service. There are some who believe that the King-inspired series is still in the very early stages and that the network wants to see how things shake out before officially making it a go. That said, a writers' room is reportedly being assembled, if it hasn’t been already.
ShouldWelcome to Derrybe officially greenlit, it would be just the latest King adaptation to become a television series or movie. HBO Max has had its finger in that particular pie before with the limited seriesThe Outsider. That show, about a shape-shifting serial killer, was originally expected to get a second season, but it appears that the coronavirus pandemic changed those plans.
