{"id":237240,"date":"2025-10-24T15:40:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-24T15:40:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/237240\/"},"modified":"2025-10-24T15:40:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-24T15:40:08","slug":"welcome-to-derry-creators-on-the-big-misconception-about-pennywise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/237240\/","title":{"rendered":"Welcome to Derry Creators on the Big Misconception About Pennywise"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tThe team behind HBO<\/a>\u2018s IT: Welcome to Derry<\/a> is clearing up a misconception about their killer clown<\/a>, while also answering a few key questions about their IT movie franchise spinoff series ahead of the show\u2019s season premiere on Sunday.<\/p>\n

\n\tFirst, here\u2019s what you need to know about the show: Welcome to Derry<\/a> is a prequel to the IT horror films set in the same cursed small Maine town, only back in 1962 \u2014 right in the middle of one of the previous \u201ccycles\u201d of violence caused by the shape-shifting killer clown Pennywise. The cast is all new, save for Bill Skarsgard as Pennywise. But filmmakers Andy Muschietti<\/a> and Barbara Muschietti<\/a> are back, along with writer Jason Fuchs, who serves as co-showrunner with Brad Caleb Kane.<\/p>\n

\n\tAlso, while you won\u2019t see them until episode two, the show has what might be the best new series opening credits sequence you\u2019ll see all year. \u201cIt took us months to do them, because Andy\u2019s such a stickler and a perfectionist trying to get them to the right place,\u201d Barbara Muschietti said of her brother and creative partner.<\/p>\n

\n\tBelow, the Argentine producer-directors (whose credits also include Mama and The Flash) discuss the new series (spoiler free) with The Hollywood Reporter ahead of this weekend\u2019s debut.<\/p>\n

\n\tSpinning off movie properties to TV has had mixed results and doing horror in particular is considered a pretty tricky genre for serialized shows. So, when approaching this, what were you trying to avoid doing? What were the pitfalls?<\/p>\n

\n\tANDY MUSCHIETTI There was nothing to avoid. All the things that you said, we weren\u2019t even aware of. We made two movies that worked, and our whole approach was to build a story with the same style and tone as the movies. We know that people reacted, emotionally, very well to what we did in the movies. So it was just replicating the tone and the style with this new story.<\/p>\n

\n\tBARBARA MUSCHIETTI We approached this the same [way] as [the] movies. We didn\u2019t think about how to do it differently in TV. Also, the horror genre is very director-driven. So that was incredibly important. So Andy directed four episodes, and then we had the incredible collaborators.<\/p>\n

\n\tThere seemed to be a decision made with Pennywise that \u201cless is more,\u201d at least in the first five episodes I watched. I think people are going to be surprised that he\u2019s not in his most famous form for a while, even though his presence is felt from the very first scene.<\/p>\n

\n\tANDY We did \u201cless is more\u201d for half the show, but then we did \u201cmore is more.\u201d The idea behind the delayed appearance is the build up of expectation. The audience doesn\u2019t know that they want it, but I think it creates a very special feeling. When and where the clown is going to appear was a game that I wanted to play with the audience.<\/p>\n

\n\tBARBARA Being a shape-shifter, Pennywise looms large. If you dissect the movies, Pennywise is not in the movies that much, but people feel It a lot when he is on camera. The last thing we want is to have an audience get comfortable with Pennywise. We don\u2019t want anybody to get used to his image. He\u2019s unpredictable. He strikes whenever he feels like it.<\/p>\n

\n\tANDY And normally, the misconception is that \u201cIt\u201d can only be one thing, one creature at a time. But it\u2019s part of the canon, even in the book, that he creates hallucinations. He creates collective creatures \u2014 like when he became the piranha, right? That\u2019s a flock of creatures.<\/p>\n

\n\tYou had a lot of communication with Stephen King. He\u2019s given the series a glowing review. Was there any specific change he wanted after reading the scripts? <\/p>\n

\n\tANDY Stephen didn\u2019t approach the show like that. He wasn\u2019t 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, \u201cYour book is a mystery. It\u2019s a puzzle and left unsolved intentionally. And we\u2019re 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\u2019s not in the book. It\u2019s a hidden story.<\/p>\n

\n\tBARBARA 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.<\/p>\n

\n\tFinally, without spoiling anything, the military plays a very large part in this story. It\u2019s not just about kids being terrorized. It seems like quite a big swing because even though some enlisted military men play a role during this \u201cInterlude\u201d in King\u2019s book, you\u2019ve really expanded what\u2019s going on there in some surprising ways. <\/p>\n

\n\tANDY We basically said, \u201cOK, 1962. What\u2019s the situation in America?\u201d It\u2019s the Cold War. The Cuban Missile Crisis is coming. The Derry base, as it said in the first episode, is the northernmost military base in the country. It makes a lot of sense that there was a lot of tension from that.<\/p>\n

\n\tMore to come from the Muschiettis following Sunday night\u2019s premiere of IT: Welcome to Derry. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The team behind HBO\u2018s IT: Welcome to Derry is clearing up a misconception about their killer clown, while…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":237241,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[104642,112087,49,48,75,5862,22149,337],"class_list":{"0":"post-237240","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-andy-muschietti","9":"tag-barbara-muschietti","10":"tag-ca","11":"tag-canada","12":"tag-entertainment","13":"tag-hbo","14":"tag-it-welcome-to-derry","15":"tag-movies"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237240","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=237240"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237240\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/237241"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=237240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=237240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=237240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}