It: Welcome to Derry Teaser Doesn’t Clown Around
They all float at HBO, and later this year, you’ll float, too. Today, the recently renamed streaming service (did anyone ever stop calling it HBO?) released a teaser for It: Welcome to Derry, the upcoming TV series based on one of Stephen King’s most famous works. A prequel to the two-part movie adaptation from 2017 and 2019, It: Welcome to Derry takes place in Derry, Maine, in 1962, when the evil creature who likes to eat children came to town before it tangled with the Losers Club in the 80s. The series stars Jovan Adepo, Chris Chalk, Taylour Page, James Remar, and Stephen Ryder, with Bill Skarsgård returning from the movies as Pennywise the Dancing Clown, the form It most often takes. Andy Muschietti, who directed the films, is an executive producer on the series, and he will direct the first four episodes of the nine-episode first season; his wife Barbara Muschietti and Jason Fuchs, both producers of the movies, are also executive producers of the series, with Fuchs and Brad Caleb Kane (the singing voice of Aladdin in the animated Disney film, if you can believe that) serving as showrunners. It: Welcome to Derry will arrive on HBO sometime in the fall, and you can see the teaser below:
I’m not thrilled about an It prequel. As with almost all prequels, it’s unnecessary; we learned all we needed to know about It in the movies, as we did in the book. And what is the story going to be? It shows up at different points throughout history and is either defeated or kills all the protagonists? If It wins, the stories seem pointless, nothing but apocryphal information that was communicated just fine in the films. And if It loses, that’s even worse because it makes what the Losers Club accomplished in the main story less special; these seven kids, a bunch of outcasts with no one but each other, managed to defeat – and, as grown-ups, destroy – the most ancient evil in the universe. If It gets beaten every time he shows up on Earth, the Losers were just the latest in a long line of kids who kicked It’s ass; they just happened to be the ones who finished the job. Having the new characters all fall to It is the better of the two ideas, but it still feels like milking the IP. And the intention is to have It: Welcome to Derry go for three seasons, with each season going back another twenty-seven years (wouldn’t it make more sense to work up to 1962?), so they want to stretch this story as far as they possibly can.
However, divorced from its premise, I like a lot of the imagery in the It: Welcome to Derry teaser. As with the movies, the atmosphere is creepy, with the small town of Derry taking on an eerie, haunted aura, like you can sense the evil lurking beneath the surface. The occasional shots of someone or something that feels wrong are unsettling, particularly that woman who smiles just a little too wide at the 1:30 mark, along with that unnerving music. Showing these random faces is more effective than showing Pennywise because it makes you feel like It is everywhere, lurking in every shadow and crevice… or sometimes in plain sight, waving at you in the daytime. I wonder if, even if I don’t care for the idea of an It prequel, Welcome to Derry can still be an effective horror show because it’s being handled by such a talented creative team. (We’ll forget for the moment that Muschietti went on to make The Flash.) In the book, Mike Hanlon investigated Derry’s past, looking for strange occurrences that were almost certainly It’s handiwork; there are long sections of the story that describe these. (In the movie, it was Ben Hanscom who did this, which was a shame because it was not only Mike’s defining character trait but the reason he was the only one who stayed in Derry when he became an adult; someone had to keep tabs on the town in case It returned, and the guy who knew It’s history best was the logical choice.) That could be the basis for the show, although based on the teaser, it doesn’t look like that’s the case, which strikes me as a missed opportunity. On the plus side, Muschietti has said that It: Welcome to Derry will get into It’s origins, something only hinted at in the movies, and I would very much like to see that; I won’t give it away in case anyone doesn’t know, but the sign outside the high school is a clue. All that is to say, I’m skeptical of It: Welcome to Derry, but I’ll check it out when it airs – probably close to Halloween, at least if the people at HBO have half a brain.
Let us know what you thought of the It: Welcome to Derry teaser in the comments!
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