Andy and Barbara Muschietti have devoted much of their lives to thinking about Stephen King‘s “It.” The sibling filmmaking duo spent most of the 2010s making a colossal two-part movie adaptation of King’s 1,138-page horror opus about a shapeshifting clown who terrorizes the small town of Derry, Maine. The two films, both directed by Andy and produced by Barbara, spanned the 1950s through the 1980s, following characters for so long that they could be introduced as Finn Wolfhard and grow up into Bill Hader. Nobody would have blamed them if they never wanted to hear the word “Pennywise” ever again.
But six years after the release of “It: Chapter Two,” the Muschiettis are back in Stephen King’s sandbox with their new prequel series “It: Welcome to Derry.” The show sees Bill Skarsgård reprise his role as Pennywise, though Season 1 takes its time introducing him in the form we’re used to seeing, and seeks to explore the origins of a character who was already quite fleshed out at the start of King’s book.
During a recent conversation with IndieWire, the Muschiettis explained that their interest in the series stemmed from their ongoing curiosity about mysteries that King intentionally left unsolved.
“There’s a lot of enigmas,” Andy Muschietti said. “I think that Stephen King purposely creates an unfinished puzzle, and those questions are the engine. These big questions are the engine of the book, and they’re at the heart of the book. There’s a big mystery because of those big question marks that are never solved. Rightfully, the story is told through the perspective of humans that are scrambling to get answers, and they don’t… At the end of the book, there’s not a lot of questions answered.”
Andy went on to explain that “Welcome to Derry” exists to answer three questions. “What is It? What does It want? And why is It in this plane of existence? So those three questions are things that we’re addressing in the big arc of this show.”
‘It: Welcome to Derry’HBO
While the “It” movies were a faithful adaptation of King’s work, the show had no choice but to chart new narrative territory. The siblings teased that they have a three-season arc envisioned for “Welcome to Derry,” which begins in 1962 and will ideally conclude in 1908 when the monster was born. While both filmmakers (who co-created the series with Jason Fuchs) were tight-lipped about specific details, Andy teased that the series will eventually “reveal the iceberg under the water over the course of the three seasons, and we will talk about a bigger mythology that is connected to the other work of Stephen King.”
How does King feel about all of the new creative choices they’re making with his characters? As the Muschiettis tell it, the master of horror literature is having a blast now that he gets to be an audience member for a change.
“We are very lucky to have a lovely relationship with him built on trust,” Barbara said. “He’s been incredibly supportive on the exploration of some of the clues he’s left in the book, and he gets excited when we show him stuff. There’s scripts or episodes that make him feel like a child again, which is great.”
“From the beginning, there was the certainty that there would be a lot of creation, a lot of invention. Stephen knew this from the beginning, and he was on board,” Andy added. “I think at this point, he’s very relaxed, and he’s more in ‘Let’s have fun’ mode than someone that is basically surveilling things that don’t quite match his original story. I think that Stephen King, over the years, he moved on from ‘It’ in the best possible way many, many years ago, and now he is open to let us play with his toys.”
‘It: Welcome to Derry’HBO
At the beginning of our conversation, Andy mentioned that “it’s a great year for Uncle Steve,” noting that 2025 has boasted new adaptations of “The Long Walk” and “The Running Man” in addition to “It: Welcome to Derry.” When asked why Stephen King enjoys such singular longevity in pop culture, both siblings pointed to some of the real-life horrors in the world around us as evidence that King has always been ahead of his time.
“I think he writes in such a human way,” Barbara said. “He is so incredible at giving his characters and stories the human side, the fullness of humanity in the sense of tragedy and comedy and emotionality. Also, he has a crystal ball. This guy understands the complexity of the human race so well.”
“He knows the idiosyncrasies of culture, American culture specifically, and always he has an eye on authoritarianism,” Andy added. “Why ‘The Long Walk’ now? Why ‘The Running Man’ now? These are dystopian regimes that are like the backdrop of these stories. ‘It’ is a parable about the weaponization of fear. Without getting political, it is a reflection about the way that things can go. When we’re ruled by fearmongers, what does It do? He prays on your fear to divide the kids because he can’t get them as a group. One of the themes of ‘It’ is the power of unified belief. What is he talking about? He’s talking about [how] we are stronger if we are together, and the bad guy is trying to, first, trick us.”
New episodes of “It: Welcome to Derry” will be released on Sundays at 9 p.m. E.T. on HBO and HBO Max through the finale on December 14.
