At the IT: Welcome to Derry panel at this year’s SDCC, Andy and Barbara Muschietti discussed how the show will be more intense than the movies and will tell the origins of Pennywise, or rather the entity that presents as the terrifying clown in our reality and they gave us a new trailer, below.
In the story, Pennywise the clown, actually a demonic emotion vampire from the darkness called Todash, returns every 27 years to terrify, maim and finally kill the children of the small Maine town, so this new tale takes us back to 1962, 27 years before Muschietti’s movies and will see Bill Skarsgård return as the hateful clown along with Taylour Paige, Jovan Adepo, Chris Chalk, James Remar, Stephen Rider, Madeleine Stowe and Rudy Mancuso.
At the panel, the Muschiettis talked about the show’s past and future and addressed some questions about what will be revealed as the show goes on – special thanks to IGN for their extensive coverage of the panel:
- The show will explain why the entity came to look like Pennywise and what the significance of the name Bob Gray, as mentioned in the original Stephen King novel, really is in relation to Pennywise.
- The notion of going back further every season – Pennywise awakens every 27 years to terrify the children of Derry and has been around a very, very long time – was King’s own. This would mean that season two will be set in 1935, season three in 1908 etc, providing the series is a hit, of course.
- The show will really push the envelope as far as gore and scares go.
- The character of Leroy Hanlon in the series is the grandfather of Mike from the original IT story and there’s a promise of more connections to the novel/movies, some obvious, some not so much.
- Sharp-eyed fans will have noticed the Shawshank Prison connection in the new teaser, below, but there will be other connections to the wider King universe with The Shining’s Dick Halloran appearing (he was mentioned in the IT novel, King loves a connected universe), played by Chris Chalk.
I have always believed that someone – my money was always on Mike Flanagan – needs to make a Stephen King shared universe of movies and TV shows; King’s novels are almost all connected in one way or another, so it’s crying out, much like Anne Rice’s Immortal Universe over on AMC, for a fully realised universe of aliens, Dark Towers, giant spiders and shops owned by the devil.
Maybe someday…
Meanwhile, see you all this Fall in front of the telly.
Watch the trailer:
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Marc
Marc is a self-confessed nerd. Ever since seeing Star Wars for the first time around 1979 he’s been an unapologetic fan of the Wars and still believes, with Clone Wars and now Underworld, we are yet to see the best Star Wars. He’s a dad of two who now doesn’t have the time (or money) to collect the amount of toys, comics, movies and books he once did, much to the relief of his long-suffering wife. In the real world he’s a graphic designer. He started Following the Nerd because he was tired of searching a million sites every day for all the best news that he loves and decided to create one place where you can go to get the whole lot. Secretly he longs to be sitting in the cockpit of his YT-1300 Corellian Transport ship with his co-pilot Chewie, roaming the universe, waiting for his next big adventure, but feels just at home watching cartoons with his kids….
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