{"id":798358,"date":"2026-08-02T00:48:08","date_gmt":"2026-08-02T00:48:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/798358\/"},"modified":"2026-08-02T00:48:08","modified_gmt":"2026-08-02T00:48:08","slug":"it-welcome-to-derry-creator-says-season-2-will-not-shy-away-from-the-horrible-cultural-themes-of-the-1930s-its-the-heart-of-ou","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/798358\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018It: Welcome to Derry\u2019 Creator Says Season 2 Will \u2018Not\u2019 Shy Away From the \u2018Horrible\u2019 Cultural Themes of the 1930s: It\u2019s the \u2018Heart of Our Story\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">As horror fans eagerly await the next chapter in Pennywise&#8217;s (Bill Skarsg\u00e5rd) horrifying reign of terror, &#8220;It: Welcome to Derry&#8221; co-creator Andy Muschietti has shared some details on the current status of Season 2.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">&#8220;We&#8217;re very excited, we&#8217;re in the writers&#8217; room right now,&#8221; Muschietti confirms to Variety.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">More from Variety<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">The new season will take place in 1935, centering around one of the interludes in Stephen King&#8217;s &#8220;It&#8221; novel \u2014 the Bradley Gang Massacre. As recalled in the book, a group of outlaws hides out in the town of Derry while fleeing the FBI, robbing and murdering store owners and causing all-around chaos. It takes place 27 years before the first season of &#8220;It: Welcome to Derry,&#8221; which follows the mystery surrounding a young boy gone missing amidst a Cold War military plot.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">&#8220;There&#8217;s gonna be a lot of that depression-era hustling in the air in our characters. Everybody&#8217;s trying to get by and survive the circumstances. They are gonna do crazy things,&#8221; Muschietti says. &#8220;And of course, the social, cultural, horrible things that were happening in the era, too. We&#8217;re not going to skip those. [They are the] very center and the heart of our story.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">While &#8220;It&#8221; fans have become accustomed to the franchise&#8217;s focus on the horror that lurks underneath images of suburban comfort and kids riding bicycles, Muschietti says Season 2&#8217;s aesthetic will differ: &#8220;In this case, on the surface, Derry is a graveyard almost. It&#8217;s a carcass of something because people are depleted, poor, tired, jobless, homeless. The kids don&#8217;t have a suburban, comforting life. They&#8217;re in a very different situation. Some of them are orphans or runaways, and so the environment is pretty bleak. But there&#8217;s always the aspect of hope that is always there, burning, and it&#8217;s what keeps our new group going.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Going back another 27 years gives Muschietti and his creative team, including co-creators Barbara Muschietti and Jason Fuchs, more of a canvas to play with; after all, the &#8217;30s interlude in King&#8217;s original novel doesn&#8217;t take up much of the overall story. But the family bloodline will help fans connect the different timelines.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">&#8220;There will always be the connection, there&#8217;s a family tree that appears,&#8221; Muschietti explains.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Muschietti began exploring the world of Derry and Pennywise in the 2017 hit film &#8220;It&#8221; and its 2019 sequel &#8220;It: Chapter Two.&#8221; He previously told Variety of his <a data-ylk=\"slk:three-season plan;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas;\" data-yga=\"{&quot;yLinkElement&quot;:&quot;link&quot;,&quot;yLinkElementType&quot;:&quot;article_link&quot;}\" href=\"https:\/\/variety.com\/2025\/tv\/news\/it-welcome-to-derry-director-andy-muschietti-kidding-the-kids-1236560839\/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">three-season plan<\/a> for &#8220;Welcome to Derry,&#8221; exploring the time periods of 1962, 1935 and 1908, respectively, with an interest in King&#8217;s interludes: &#8220;I realized there was a hidden story there, and that Stephen King was leaving crumbs that could guide us somewhere. It&#8217;s a story told backwards.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">But the horror director and screenwriter still has his eyes set on adapting other King stories.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">&#8220;I cannot talk too much about it because some of them are [active] projects. One that I did touch that&#8217;s not a current project, but I would love to go back to at some point is &#8216;The Juant,&#8217; which is a short story that blew my mind when I read it. I was 14 or something,&#8221; Muschietti says of the short story in King&#8217;s &#8220;Skeleton Crew&#8221; collection. &#8220;It just completely shattered me.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">&#8220;It: Welcome to Derry&#8221; Season 1 is currently streaming on HBO Max.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Best of Variety<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Sign up for <a data-ylk=\"slk:Variety&#039;s Newsletter;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas;\" data-yga=\"{&quot;yLinkElement&quot;:&quot;link&quot;,&quot;yLinkElementType&quot;:&quot;article_link&quot;}\" href=\"https:\/\/cloud.email.variety.com\/signup\/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">Variety&#8217;s Newsletter<\/a>. For the latest news, follow us on <a data-ylk=\"slk:Facebook;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas;\" data-yga=\"{&quot;yLinkElement&quot;:&quot;link&quot;,&quot;yLinkElementType&quot;:&quot;article_link&quot;}\" href=\"http:\/\/bit.ly\/31XsHSx\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">Facebook<\/a>, <a data-ylk=\"slk:Twitter;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas;\" data-yga=\"{&quot;yLinkElement&quot;:&quot;link&quot;,&quot;yLinkElementType&quot;:&quot;article_link&quot;}\" href=\"http:\/\/bit.ly\/2TkcoeG\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">Twitter<\/a>, and <a data-ylk=\"slk:Instagram;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas;\" data-yga=\"{&quot;yLinkElement&quot;:&quot;link&quot;,&quot;yLinkElementType&quot;:&quot;article_link&quot;}\" href=\"http:\/\/bit.ly\/2TntOHq\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">Instagram<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As horror fans eagerly await the next chapter in Pennywise&#8217;s (Bill Skarsg\u00e5rd) horrifying reign of terror, &#8220;It: Welcome&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":798359,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[127086,134416,88,338773,15823,92,83027],"class_list":["post-798358","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-andy-muschietti","tag-barbara-muschietti","tag-entertainment","tag-muschietti","tag-stephen-king","tag-tv","tag-welcome-to-derry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/798358","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=798358"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/798358\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/798359"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=798358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=798358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=798358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}