Cautiously optimistic about this. It's unnecessary but still has the potential to be good. I'm assuming Bill Skarsgård will return?

Andy Muschietti will executive produce and direct multiple episodes.

>Set in the world of Stephen King’s IT universe, Welcome To Derry is based on King’s IT novel and expands on the story established by filmmaker Andy Muschietti in the feature films IT and IT Chapter Two.

>Jason Fuchs will write the teleplay for the first episode, based on a story by Andy Muschietti, Barbara Muschietti, and Fuchs. Fuchs and Brad Caleb Kane will serve as co-showrunners on the project. Andy Muschietti and Barbara Muschietti (through their Double Dream production company, which has an overall deal with WBTV), Fuchs, and Kane are executive producers. Andy Muschietti will direct multiple episodes of the series, including the first episode. The series is produced by HBO Max and Warner Bros. Television.

You will go far in life, Jenny. But you will not be well-liked

Officially greenlit i guess because the team is already deep in preproduction in Toronto pretty sure the writing is over.

I'd watch an IT-Derry Girls crossover show.

I’d imagine it’d end with them driving him insane and fleeing from them. Makes me think of that writing prompt I saw a while ago that imagined Pennywise going after the boys from Malcolm in the Middle. Spoiler: he didn’t get a chance to eat the boys, but recognized the true master of terror when Lois came looking for them.

Why just pick up Castle Rock? That was a good series?

Or revive that True Blood ?

So it sounds like it’s treating the movies as canon which is nice. But I don’t see what the story’s going to be. It doesn’t really make narrative sense to fill in the gaps in the main cast’s stories. So will this instead be about an earlier Pennywise stint in Derry?

It’s a prequel to all the other times IT attacked Derry. In the books they have a periodic interludes to prior attacks in its 27 year cycle

Fucking Sister Michael - she was the best lol

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Really hoping they go back to ITs arrival.

meh

Right I’m aware - that’s what I mentioned in my comment. I just don’t see much of a story there. The main story we hear of his past was the visit Mike’s grandad(?) witnessed. But in general, what we know about them all is that everyone died.

He has too.

The movies were okay but overall rushed tot he point of feeling incomplete. not surprising given the source material being over 1000 pages but i think another miniseries would have been better. some of the creative choices regarding the characters were interesting though

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I kinda want to see another take on Pennywise. I like Bill as an actor, but I don't find his Pennywise scary.

am skeptical, because Stephen King appears to NOT be involved

usually not good

Would be happy to see Lena Dunham get devoured by a clown.

Hoping the 2017 cast make a cameo

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Derry Girls is an Irish comedy show about Catholic school. It's not the same thing as Girls.

Third time's a charm, I guess.

no thanks

Not necessarily. Every 27 years for thousands of years opens up a lot of story ideas depending on if each episode is standalone or the season follows one major event. We only know of, what, three major events (iron works explosion, gang shoot out, nightclub fire)?

"how can we milk a little bit more out of this franchise?"

Sure, I'm not saying I'm not open to it. I'm just trying to figure out what we'll see based on what the story gives us.

I just feel like there needs to be something more than "people start dying, town freaks out, someone chases away the evil, evil goes into hibernation." It would feel like just an adaptation of the story we've already seen, but with new characters subbed in.

I'm fully ready to be proved wrong though. It's just my first impression.

>I think this is a fair take, not sure why your being downvoted. I liked alot of the scenes with him but there were these other scenes like in Patrick Hockstetters death (who was way underrepresented in both movies) where Pennywise kind of...turbo waddles up to him before the scene ends. Id have to rewatch to remember the other scenes where they chose to have Pennywise turbo-waddle but there are a few of them and I thought it was kinda lame each time.
>
>
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>I felt like Tim Curry's rendition was much more chilling and am with you in that I'd want someone else to give the role a go.

The conflict here has led to so many atrocities.

And now, we must add your play to that list.

Wrong show, but that would be pretty enjoyable.

Anytime a studio is getting ready to send out a press release, they should have an editor go in and delete any use of the phrase "cinematic universe" in it before it goes out. Hearing about a studio's latest attempt to create a cinematic universe just makes me not want to watch their show at this point.

>Makes me think of that writing prompt I saw a while ago that imagined Pennywise going after the boys from Malcolm in the Middle.

link?

I think it would have been better if they relied on his acting more than cheap cgi jump scares. They really missed the mark on part 2. You could see the jump scares coming a mile away, and that's kind of all they tried.

Bummer that it’s HBO Max and not HBO

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Andy Muschietti is producing and directing multiple episodes, there is absolutely no way in hell he is gonna switch actors, especially since Bill’s performance was so well received.

Still I was always quite intrigued when Will Poulter was originally cast, I would be super interested in what his take on the character would be

Does he?

If Bill Skarsgard is in, so am I.

The problem with “reviving” True Blood is that everything after the initial story arcs, both in the source material and the show, gets really fucking dumb.

Damn Muschietti got carried by the cinematographer and great material in It Chapter 1. Everything else he has done is mediocre or worse. Wish they would let him go but oh well.

The trouble with Castle Rock is that they ran it quickly into the ground.

I hope this show digs deep into the racist history of Derry that Mike narrates throughout the novel. Cutting Mike's narration is one of the biggest flaws both adaptations make as it really impacts the tone and theme.

He definitely will! It wouldn’t be the same without him! His Pennywise is my favorite character!

There was also a sort of malaise (probably the wrong word) in Derry, because of It. Any small issue affecting the negative behavior increased. I theorize low impulse-control, for one thing.

prequels sequels multiverses

jeebus

I was so confused when they decided to make a show about Castle Rock. Of the imaginary Stephen King cities there’s clearly one that we wanna see more of, and it’s the one where an interdimensional mind spider lived (lives?) and made the whole place just extra haunted and full of excessively shitty inhabitants.

castle rock wasnt popular enough - it is the highest grossing horror film not adjusted for inflation so is likely to be far more popular.

true blood - has not been off air long enough to justify a reboot

Assuming Pennywise is a primary form throughout the show then it will definitely be him. However I can see Pennywise being used heavily in the early episodes before later ones move on to other forms and personas

With IT Crowd mixed in a bit?

I was super interested in the Fukunaga/Poulter movie we never got.

The real problem was their criminal underuse of Jane Levy. It also didn’t help that they planned on having season 2 focus on her character heading to the Overlook Hotel, but then the Doctor Sleep movie got announced and they had to rewrite everything.

“Hello this is Pennywise. Have you tried turning it off and on again”?

The Flash is receiving great feedback in test screenings, and WB will be screening it at CinemaCon two full months before it’s official release. Given the studio’s confidence in a film that’s had such a troubled production until Muschietti came along, I wouldn’t be surprised if they let him direct whatever he wants now.

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There are plenty of years in the book to work with.

Perhaps we will get an appearance by Dick Hallorann from The Shining or Jack Epping from 11-22-63 ??

Prequel has been Deadlit for production.

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I read a few drafts his script and was always sad that he didn’t get to make the movie, even though I enjoyed the Muschietti films

I'll just put this balloon... with the rest of the balloons

I did enjoy part 1 but still, I would have preferred a less “flashy” adaptation. Overall too many jumpscared, like you said. Part 2 wasn't even close to as good as 1 was.

WBD really just cashing in on every single IP they have today huh?

Cash in

Part 1 was far better. Did a better job of leaning into the unsettling aspect of Pennywise which is how Tim Curry did such an awesome job.

Well, I think it's safe to say that we all just lost a bit of respect for you there, Clare.

https://www.reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts/comments/7124c9/eu_pennywise_picks_on_the_wrong_kids_malcolm/

They started doing that with castle rock on Hulu. I thought it was great. Wish I knew if Hulu was going to keep it going.

and it’s canceled due to budget cuts…

Yes! This would also give them an opportunity to plant the seed for a proper Dark Tower series.

For anyone who hasn’t read the book or thinks this is unnecessary, in the book Pennywise & Derry have a very long history together and there are tons of great stories spanning hundreds of years in the town that would be great to see fleshed out. It definitely has the potential to be really good!

Welcome to Derry Girls

> Or revive that True Blood ?

They should reboot True Blood, but every time somebody says "Beel" or "SOOKie", they use soundbytes from the original. And just bring back Alexander Skarsgard with no comment whatsoever

It is strongly implied that IT may be the Crimson King, or maybe the Crimson Queen, or related in some way to the Crimson King, or IT and the Crimson King both come from “the Prim,” the chaotic primordial soup of the universe.

I wouldn’t mind them relating the two, but If I recall correctly, not much that happens in Dark Tower takes place before the Loser Club reigns in Derry, but they can die whatever to tie them together, that’d be cool.

Was it not green lit the last time it was announced as coming to HBO Max?

No, Pennywise is small potatoes compared to the Crimson King. There is another being that Roland encounters during his travels that is much closer to Pennywise. But whereas Pennywise fed on fear the other (Dandelo) fed off of laughter.

While King does have a habit of having characters reappear in other stories, they stay more or less consistent in what they do. The Walking dude will tempt people, and travel and cause mischief, the Crimson King will try to destroy whatever he can, but Pennywise was just content to sit in Derry and feed. It doesn't fit the Crimson King's MO at all.

The book has a ton of material that wasn’t covered in the movies. They only covered the Losers’ Club in the movies but the material we didn’t get goes into past disasters caused by Pennywise’s influence over the town.

I really liked Skarsgard's take on Pennywise. Both him and Curry are iconic in their own ways.

I'm cautiously optimistic. The last King series' I remember coming out were Castle Rock and The Mist. I liked Castle Rock barely enough to finish the series, but I would not rewatch or recommend. The Mist was just bad, so unfaithful to King's novella that I'm hopeful it doesn't count as a King series.

IT Crowd - Derry Girls would be even better.

Whether or not IT is the some facet of the Crimson King will probably never truly be definitively stated, however I would love to have confirmation that Dandelo is one of her offspring.

While in the book IT, while Pennywise obviously knows much about the macroverse and her relation to it and her form in the main world, but she just doesn’t seem to care much about it. She has her hunting grounds in Derry and is more or less content with the state of things until the Loser’s Club decide to fight back. Compare that to how she acts in her brief appearance in 11/22/63 where she almost uses her/Jakes knowledge of portals to different worlds as a honey trap to lure him in.

Fuck I’d love to see a 20s pennywise.

It was barely adapted at all for the movies IMO. There's so much more depth and potential to the story than made it to screen. Everybody just dumbs it down to "in the book there's a space turtle, lol, cocaine amiright?"

They basically assigned almost all of Mike's character traits and big moments to other characters, what a bummer that was.

A clown musical...called Clown.

That lumberjack bar fight stuck with me.

I often see people ignoring 99.6 percent of the book and trying to use that one scene, you know the scene, to passive aggressively accuse King of being a pedophile.

It's over, sadly, though with the way it's structured as each season being a separate story I suppose they could bring it back whenever.

The movies were so painfully average and not scary at all and way too much cgi and it just didn’t do it for me. IT tv miniseries was much better for what it was

I would love to be proven wrong. It chapter 2 was majorly bad and chapter 1 isn't as good as it could've been due to muschiettis impulses. But I have wanted a good flash movie forever and I like what I've seen so far. So i will happily (and hopefully) admit that I am wrong when flash comes out.

So the cancel countdown has begun.

Sadly, I'm unable to come on this one, as I despise the French.

Having read one of the drafts, it definitely was a lot more interesting than what we got imo, but at the same time it was very "elevated horror" and absolutely would've been hated by the general audience.

You can have zero discussion about Stephen King or any of his works on Reddit without that scene being prevalent in the thread. It's fucking rediculous - the accusations they throw his way most especially.

I really enjoyed it 2 but felt it dragged on too long at the end. The scene with the kids killing pennywise was so goofy

Same goes with LOST. You could be talking about a prop in season 2 and someone will bring up purgatory. But yeah it's absurd. "Horror writer writes disturbing scene" is NOT EVIDENCE OF ANYTHING

So this will essentially be Dahmer but Pennywise on a killing spree.

So much of horror is judged based on its scare factor and that's just not how I view things. Skarsgard was endlessly entertaining and could absolutely enhance this show.

They have to finish filming it first.

Even though Purgatory is not what the ending was about...

The first one is fantastic

Is there a link to this?

You show some respect! That space turle is Gan!

MILK IT DRY BABY!

Do they?

Yes, you're right, of course, but that's what people always want to talk about. It's an irritatingly persistent rumor, and remarkable how much nobody remembers the character explicitly saying the island was real.

Did you catch that ludicrous display last night?

Get hugo weaving.

I really hope we get to see Mike's dad beat the shit out of Bower's dad. Or was it the grandfather?

Really? I thought he was phenomenal

Clowns... What a bunch of bastards.

Welcome to the United CLOWNdom!

Dis gon b gud

Now that I know this I love the idea of each season being set in drastically different time periods.

Bill was excellent, but I agree his portrayal wasn't particularly scary - through no fault of his own. They chose to make their Pennywise very silly and cartoonish, which didn't feel quite right to me tonally.

I still liked the new films overall, but that aspect didn't really do it for me.

Please for the love of god just let us have a film or short series of films that we dont absolutely fucking massacre with endless and pointless spinoffs and sequels. At least wait another 27 years before you make some bullshit like “Somehow, Pennywise has returned”

Space turtle?

So IT is a girl? What’s she doing 11/22/63?

Is IT causing it or just taking advantage of it?

Yes. The fire at the nightclub in 1930 for example is a notable example of that.

I believe It is the cause.

I’m disabled…

I thought Pennywise was another Dandelo like the creature Roland meets; that one fed off laughter rather than fear. Never heard of Pennywise being the Crimson King, though.

Would be cool to see this be the start of a cinematic King universe. Seems like Castle Rock was trying to do that on Hulu; shame it got cancelled.

How the fuck do you make a prequel series about a cosmic monster around since the dinosaurs

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sounds like prequel to derry girls

Well, it’s preferred form in its lair in the sewers under Derry is of a massive female pregnant spider, but it’s true form is the Deadlights, which don’t exist in our universe, plus Pennywise is inherently male. Assigning gender to a shapeshifter is always a tricky thing, especially when IT is actually a malevolent ball of pulsating light.

In 11/22/63 Jake goes back in time to stop the Kennedy assassination using a sorta portal in time a friend of his found years before, however the moment you get sent back to is fixed. It’s always August of 1958, so before committing 5 years of his life to save Kennedy he needs proof that you can truly alter time. He does this by saving a family in Derry that gets murdered by their father on Halloween. (except for one son who Jake knows in the present, which is how he knew of the event.)

Derry is a violent town even when Pennywise is “asleep” it’s a part of the symbiotic relationship that the town and creature have with each other, just every 27 years or so it skyrockets even further. The point being that Jake hates it there, he spends two months waiting in Derry for the event (meeting Richie and Bev at one point) with the cover story that he’s in real estate looking for a location for a hidden buyer. To put off any suspicion that he isn’t there for that job he drives out to the old Ironworks (where Mike had his first encounter with IT) while there he notices several animal bones at the base of a fallen smokestack and then hears a voice in his head beckoning him to walk inside and forget about his mission and the past, that maybe there’s another portal in here that’ll take him somewhere even newer. It’s worth noting that Jake is there only a short time after the Losers beat IT during the 57/58 cycle. So Pennywise is in its less active state.

Jake would later hear that voice again when he heads to Dallas while looking at the Texas book depository where Oswald would shoot the President in a few years time and several decades before for Jake.

King makes several allusions about Dallas and Derry being extremely similar in nature, with a malevolent nature about them. That’s not to say that there’s an IT in Dallas too, but Jake thinks at one point that he wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a portal in Dallas similar to whatever was in that smokestack.

Is it gonna be IT only? Derry shows up in more Steven King Novels....if they make this, they should sneak in some easter eggs referencing 11/22/63, Pet Sematary and Insomnia.

At first I thought it was an IT and Derrt Girls crossover and I got really excited

Actually it's not. The turtle dies in IT. It's heavily implied that there is another force beyond the turtle (the creator) and IT (the destroyer) who is guiding the kids.

For a second I thought we'd find out how Roy and Moss got hired.

King has also alluded to the idea that Pennywise or maybe one of his spawn is still alive. Tommyknockers has a scene where they drive through Derry and in one of the storm drains they see silver eyes. Which in the books are how Pennywise eyes are predominately described. Then in Dreamcatcher there is a scene where they are in Derry and there is a memorial commemorating the Losers Club that has "Pennywise Lives" spraypainted on it.

Yup the whole thing about Pennywise is that he's essentially an eldritch horror from beyond who is designed to destroy worlds that got lazy as shit and decided to shirk his duties by making a corporeal form and just setting up shop in a small town and feasting on it's children every few decades.

As bad as Derry was, the rest of the universe kinda got good deal with IT deciding to confine itself to Derry until the Losers wiped IT out.

Well... I guess I'll just shut up and go read the book then...

That has far less to do with Muschietti and more to do with how they split the material imo. The adult portion in the novels is meant to be mixed in and be complimented by the child person. It doesn't stand as well on it's own because it was never meant to.

Yeah after reading more I don’t think they’re the same, but maybe related.

Maybe they’d even be closer to something like gnostic æons, sharing power from one divine source but behaving totally independent of that source (and sometimes against that source).

IT can take any form (and often does in the book) so you don't really need Bill to come back. you could have many actors and CGI play the role really. maybe Bill will come back for a one episode cameo when IT is in the form of Pennywise.

i'd hope somehow Tim Curry could be involved though. he's the OG and best Pennywise

I'm talking about the film looking worse visually. And him getting bad performances out of good actors. And him using the trope he used from Mama for the attacks in chapter 1 one of "penny wise runs at characters quick then nothing happens". And him losing track of the tone of the film to the point it was a comedy. And going with an ending of bullying the clown into a baby. And then spending 1 hour on useless totems that felt unrelated to them and pointless in the plot. And him relegating the only black character to doing almost nothing in each film. And the letter for the suicide that is like "don't worry guys it was cool my husband completes suicide". And lastly that chapter 2 is one of the worst major horror films in a while

I know the material was hard, but they also spliced in kid stuff anyway in chapter 2 and it didn't help it.

HBO, not Netflix

The turtle Maturin is a guardian of the Beam like Shardik the bear. I wonder if turtle died as a result of the Breakers or just something else.

I think King mentioned there’s a guardian and a demon on each Beam, It could have been that Beams guardian.

Also Dandelo was likely a spawn or relation of It as well.

This is also a prequel to Derry Girls.

I'm pretty confident that most of the people who say that have never actually watched the show. Because I refuse to believe someone could be dumb enough to believe it when an important character virtually looks directly into the camera to say "Everything that happened on the Island really happened."

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In the book Pennywise is more of an elemental force corrupting the town, and there's a good force (represented as a space turtle) trying to help the kids defeat him.

Watching paint dry would be better than watching It chapter 2, so hopefully this has more Pennywise and less everything else.

Most people who talk about it likely haven't read it. Even the scene, let alone the entire book.

It's a weird scene, don't get me wrong. It's used as a metaphor for transitioning from childhood to the next stage of life, in order to separate them from IT's influence. Probably better ways to have done that, but it was part of Bev's story, to be thinking along those lines, and that fits.

The entire end of the book goes so far off the deep end, that honestly this scene doesn't even really stand out.

Well, sorta - the writers confused the issue by making purgatory relevant to the last season when it wasn't before. Had they not done that, a lot fewer people would be confused.

Yeah, was gonna say essentially this. There's tons of potential for stories to be told, either that were in the book and cut out of one or both of the movies, or hinted at that could be fully fleshed out, or even existing in the massive expanses of time that the book just skips over.

Sort of a feedback loop

HBO Max.

It sounds like you're only familiar with the movies, the book gives a lot more historical material to work with that was just cut completely out of the movies. Some of it is more covered briefly, some of it is pretty detailed. But there's a lot to work with.

I’ve read the book. That’s why I mentioned Mike’s family’s backstory … though maybe that was in the movie too, I don’t remember.

I know that there’s more backstory there, but at no point did I think “this would be an interesting TV show.” Like I said, I’ll be watching and I’d be happy to be proved wrong. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time. But apparently questioning the premise is a no-no on this one.

Oh, you were referencing the Black Spot incident. I think they do make at least a small reference to it in the movies.

I guess the major difference is that I feel like all of those stories, actually getting into them as much as we do in the books, is a strength of the book and part of what makes it not entirely cumbersome at its page count, it really drives home that this is not a new problem, but it's entirely too much to fit into a movie, or even two movies.

Oh for sure. They’re great segments of the book. I’m just wary of how much they’ll stand on their own versus just being flashbacks.

I would’ve loved a full proper adaptation as a series. The first movie was great and the second was okay, but there’s just so much in the book that can’t fit. Now it feels like they’re going about it both ways. We’ll see though.

Just imagine if people actually read through a full series like The Dark Tower. That scene is sure, a topic, but if they remotely knew Susannah's arc they'd be flying.

And ironically now it’s a part of this thread

HBO just announced that they canceled their plans to reboot it. None of the scripts ever got off the ground.

Eh, if you have watched 6 seasons of a show and you can't be bothered to actually pay attention to the dialog in the last episode that is on you.

I was pretty rattled by the movie but if I’m honest it was the editing more than the creatures. That face tracking they do on Pennywise when he’s getting real murdery haunts my dreams

Prequel to the events of IT, maybe? All those stories shown in the book but (maybe) hinted at in the movies

Hell yes

Hard pass

I mean to be fair the book is 1000+ pages long. Would loved to have seen some of that existential philosophicalness at the end of the movies with the turtle though.

It’s been awhile but isn’t the Turtle in Desperation as well and helps whoever (forget the character’s name) seal away Tak?

Screw this crap, BRING BACK RAISED BY WOLVES!

I can't find it right now but there was a selection from an earlier version of the script which absolutely nailed the cosmic horror element of the story absent from the copy-of-a-copy Stranger Things treatment we got. It would have gotten a terrible Cinemascore rating and been limited to cult classic status though.

Now that's a book just itching for an adaption. Tak is one of King's scariest monsters.

Part 2 was probably never going to do as well, because it covered the less popular part of the book.

Hahaha

Thank god it didn't end in a underaged orgy.