HBO is digging deep into Stephen King’s twisted back catalogue with It: Welcome to Derry, a prequel series expanding the mythology of Pennywise and the cursed Maine town he haunts. After unveiling a gruesome sneak peek at Comic-Con, HBO has now release a second official teaser.
Set in the early 1960s, decades before the events of the recent It films, the series explores how Derry’s darkness took root and who’s brave or foolish enough to confront it. The footage shown at San Diego Comic-Con was unflinching, opening with a troubled boy running from a movie theater into a snow-covered nightmare. What follows is a surreal encounter with a seemingly kind family that rapidly descends into full-blown body horror, culminating in a demonic death. The show wastes no time reminding audiences that in Derry, nobody is safe.
The prequel ties in closely to the It films directed by Andy Muschietti, who returns as executive producer. Bill Skarsgård reprises his role as Pennywise, though the show’s scope reaches beyond the clown. Longtime King fans will note deeper connections across the author’s sprawling universe. One moment in the teaser trailer a shot of a “Shawshank State Prison” bus, drops a clear signal that Welcome to Derry is stepping fully into the shared Kingverse.
During the Comic-Con Q&A, producers confirmed familiar names will appear. Jovan Adepo plays Leroy Hanlon, grandfather to Mike Hanlon from It. Chris Chalk joins the cast as Dick Halloran, the psychic cook from The Shining. Halloran, who “was a soldier who helped found the ill-fated Black Spot,” according to King’s novel, is now being brought to the screen with a larger role. “There would be other connections to the IT characters,” Muschietti said during the panel. “Some more obvious or revealed more quickly than others.”
Alongside the trailer, HBO confirmed that Welcome to Derry will feature multiple timelines, allowing the story to unfold across decades. This structure gives the series room to explore the town’s cursed history in layers, tracing the origins of Pennywise’s terror and how it’s shaped generations of Derry’s residents. With the 1960s serving as the narrative spine, the show will also include flashbacks to earlier hauntings, deepening the mythology established in the films and novels.
As HBO leans harder into horror and legacy storytelling, Welcome to Derry may prove to be more than just another King adaptation. It’s positioning itself as the connective tissue of a terrifying shared world and the sewer is only getting deeper. You can watch the latest trailer below.
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