‘The book is full of enigmas and questions’: Welcome to Derry creators Barbara and Andy Muschietti on why the HBO horror series is more than just Pennywise

Welcome to Derry has made a huge first impression already, and there’s plenty more to uncover across the eight-part HBO Max series.

In my Welcome to Derry review, I called the series “a welcome expansion of Stephen King’s huge novel,” and I also had the chance to talk to the creators about what’s coming up over the next few weeks.

At the time of writing, with only two episodes out, I can promise you that so much more is coming. During a roundtable with TechRadar and other press, the brother-sister filmmaking duo Barbara and Andy Muschietti shared more about the series.

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Andy Muschietti told us, “The principal motivation of telling the story is just putting all the pieces of the puzzle together. The book is full of enigmas and questions. My curiosity was the main motivator for telling the story.”

“What really happened? What were the causes that led to the burning of the black spot or the massacre of the Bradley Gang? That was the first thing, and of course, telling the story of Pennywise and his origins.”

“It ended up being something bigger than all of that, but that was the excitement of it. I will add that we are telling the story of many more characters because we’re also focusing on an adult storyline outside of our Losers storyline. There’s a lot of new pieces in the puzzle but I think we managed to do a good job.”

This is an exciting time for horror fans. Considering just how large the IT novel is with 1,138 pages, a TV series is the perfect way for us to explore some of the themes and incidents that were merely teased in the original. Even though the first two Muschietti-directed IT movies did cover a lot of ground, they’re definitely not done yet.

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Pennywise is an iconic horror name but there’s much more to the novel than meets the eye, and this interview only teased a fraction of what’s to come for the HBO Max horror series. I loved knowing they wanted to do more with the universe, and King’s favored fictional town of Derry, where plenty of terrible things have happened.

(Image credit: HBO Max)

I’m not alone in my excitement either, as Stephen King himself recently responded to the series, exclusively telling The Post. “I like Welcome to Derry a lot.

“There are plenty of horrors and lots of surreal visuals. There’s a supermarket scare that sticks in my mind, complete with pickle jars.”

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The Muschietti siblings expanded on collaborating with King during their roundtable with us, saying, “We pitched him the idea for the show like 4 years ago. We talked to him about it, and he was like, ‘great, let’s do it.'”

“I think he was as curious about where this was going as us. And we told him that we had this strange desire to tell the story backwards. So we would go from 1962, being the first season, to 1935, and then to 1908.”

“There’s a very specific reason why we’re telling the story backwards. I can’t tell you yet, but there’s a reason why we’re going backwards, but he, without knowing why, he immediately said ‘that’s a good idea’.”

“From then on, I think that he was very open to exploration because even though the book is massive and it’s full of stories and characters, it’s all very fragmented and partially told.”

While more Welcome to Derry has not been greenlit yet, it does seem there’s scope for at least two more seasons. If it’s renewed, we’d get to see so much more, so I really am crossing my fingers for it to happen.

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