As we wait for Max’s Welcome to Derry series to hit our screens and terrify us with even more stories from the iconic town dreamed up by one of horror’s biggest names, IT director and series produced Andy Muschetti is drip-feeding us new details about the projects. In the same interview with Argentina’s Radio TU where he revealed that HBO has already planned three seasons for the upcoming prequel series, he also mentioned that Stephen King, the author behind the tale of Pennywise the clown, has already given the series his stamp of approval.
Of the series, Muschetti says that King “has to approve everything,” but that, as opposed to working on the original IT movies, it was a “really informal” process. “I’ve had a close relationship with Stephen King since I made the movies,” the director said. “He writes to me, and I write him back. It’s an honor for me, and I consider him a friend.”
According to Muschetti, King was involved with Welcome to Derry from the very beginning, and watched the series develop before anyone else got their hands on it:
“One day, I wrote to him and said, ‘We have this idea, which is to develop the interludes in a miniseries that will take place before the events of the movie,’ and he loved it. He said, ‘Let’s do it!’ Obviously, as we progressed, we kept showing him the work, and he approved the first draft of the script. Then we showed him where we would take the future seasons of the show. He trusts us because of what we did with the movies, which he loved as much as audiences did.”
Welcome to Derry is set to introduce us to a new cast of characters terrorized by Pennywise decades before he ever meets Bill, Richie, and the rest of the misfits from IT. The series stars Jovan Adepo, James Remar, Taylour Paige, Chris Chalk, and Stephen Rider. Bill Skarsgård will also return, this time to the silver screen, to play Pennywise, which he played in both of Muschetti’s films.
Welcome to Derry premieres on Max sometime this year. You can watch Muschetti’s full interview with Radio TU (provided you speak Spanish) down below:
