Horror Welcome to Derry - HBO Max Developing IT Prequel Series

[Pennywise]

Andy Muschietti says IT: Welcome To Derry "will take things to the edge"

Andy Muschietti says IT: Welcome To Derry "will take things to the edge"

www.avclub.com

AVC: The show takes place in 1962. How does this specific time period affect the arc and aesthetics of the show?

AM: 1962 is the Pennywise cycle previous to the story in the movie, but in the book, the main story happens in 1958 with the kids. So that was exciting to us right away because even if it’s not the same characters, we’re going into a similar cultural era covered in the book. We wanted to capitalize on the fear of being in the Cold War and the panic of possibly being bombed by Russia. There’s also another range of fears from this era I wanted to tap into from the kids’ perspective, which is things like radioactive mutations. Using both those angles to help with the creation of this world, aesthetically speaking, was appealing. I treated this season as if it were a movie, in the sense that we got Chapter Two‘s production designer [Paul D. Austerberry] and costume designer [Luis Sequeira] because I wanted to preserve that cinematic feel. Everybody was very excited to jump into the early ’60s and embrace not only the aesthetic parts but the deeper idiosyncrasies of what an American small town at that time was like.

AVC: Does the show match the film’s tone in terms of creepiness, or did you get to change things since you have eight hourlong episodes?

AM: I wanted to maintain the same tone of the movie because I wanted the movies themselves to maintain the tone of the book, which is terribly scary and graphically violent. There are heightened emotions, but there’s also a lot of humor. The mandate for me was always being faithful to all that, but I will say the show does get more intense. We had the opportunity to make it creepier because it’s a bigger canvas with more characters and more of their fears to explore. The intention is to take things to the edge and give audiences more than what they’ve experienced in the movies before.

AVC: You directed the opening scene of the premiere, which is quite gnarly and further helps establish that creepy tone.

AM: Yeah, I wanted to establish a sense of how no one is really safe in this world, which is a little bit of the same idea that we expressed in the first movie’s opening with Georgie’s death, which is pretty gruesome, and also with Adrian Mellon’s death at the beginning of Chapter Two. In general, as an opening for the show, I wanted to create an augmented feeling that nothing is sacred or safe in Derry. The challenge was how to do it and make it more spectacular, especially for people who have seen the movies and understand how effective a graphic incident like the show’s opening scene is. It all comes from what I mentioned before about my desire to make a creature that stems from what a kid’s fear in the early ’60s was, which is a mutant of some sort.

AVC: Did you always sign up to direct four installments, or did that choice come about naturally while working on the scripts?

AM: That part evolved a bit. I knew I wanted to develop and create the show with other writers, but I knew I couldn’t direct all eight because that’s a big task. I also wanted time to make other movies. But over the course of the first few months, as the drafts were happening, I realized that I wanted to do more, so I thought I’d direct episodes one and two for the specific reason of establishing certain new characters. I was committed to that. And then I said, “Well, of course I’ll do the finale, too.” But the lead-up to our finale is so great that I didn’t want to not be part of the penultimate episode. So then I committed to doing those four, and I love and respect the other directors who came aboard.

AVC: Another important arc seems to be about the Native American rituals and beliefs about the monster and how they tie into what the adults are doing.

AM: The intervention of Native characters in the book is very important, and we wanted to grab it and extend it. In the interludes, it unlocks the investigations of the Losers and makes them face reality differently. I was always very attentive to that in the book. Natives were the first people on this land and so the first people who encountered It. In many ways, their story is as or more important than the story that our Losers go through. But it’s a big question mark in the book about how this happened. So we basically go into that in the show and open the drawer to create a story that might be unfamiliar to readers as well. It’s a new narrative that connects to the Indigenous community.

AVC: One of the main characters is Dick Hallorann, played by Chris Chalk, who fans of The Shining will be familiar with. What was the idea behind bringing him into Welcome To Derry in such a big way?

AM: Dick has a very predominant role in this story. In the book, he’s part of the Black Spot tragedy when it burned down, but that story is told in fragmented pieces. We don’t know the full extent of Dick’s participation, and that’s what we wanted to find out here. We realized he plays a much larger role. Chris Chalk is exceptional in this. I hadn’t known him before in person before casting him, and when I saw his tape, it blew my mind. He brought a great deal of mysticism, but he’s also grounded. His character goes on a weird journey as someone who has “the shine” and is in conflict with that throughout.

AVC: We can’t end without a tease of just how much we’ll see of Bill Skarsgård as Pennywise.

AM: I cannot say when and how Pennywise appears because it would be a spoiler. Of course, we’re going to see him incarnated in different ways, but eventually, we will see the clown that we all love to hate. There was an attempt to keep Bill not in the proximity of the new young actors to preserve that aura that he has when he’s in costume and in character, at least just to preserve the first scene when they all see each other. But then, after that, everyone quickly became friends with Bill. He’s very careful about the effect he has on people when he’s in costume, but all the actors were very excited about Pennywise showing up on set.

 

[Pennywise]

'Welcome to Derry': On set of the 'It' prequel tracing Pennywise's origins (exclusive)

Welcome back to Derry! How HBO's 'It' prequel traces the origins of Pennwise and the cursed Maine town. An exclusive report from set.

ew.com

 

[Pennywise]

'It: Welcome To Derry' Blows Open the Legend of Pennywise. It'll Shock You.

In the new HBO series, 'It' and 'It: Chapter Two' creators Andy and Barbara Muschietti go deep on the sewer-dwelling entity in Stephen King’s classic book.

www.esquire.com

 

[:eek:]

‘IT: Welcome To Derry’ A “Parable Of Fear Mongering” More Relevant Now Than When It Was Written, Says Andy Muschietti

'IT: Welcome To Derry' is a "parable of fear mongering" more relevant now than when it was written, says director-producer Andy Muschietti.

deadline.com

 

[Sawyer]

 

[OrbOfConfusion]

Wild, weird, and gory. Sounds like we're in for something great, and about time since we're overdue for another good horror TV show.

TV, as I haven't seen any streaming-exclusive horror shows.

 

[Pennywise]

Welcome to Derry Promises a Darker, Deeper IT Universe & More

Welcome to Derry creators Jason Fuchs and Brad Caleb Kane discuss expanding Stephen King’s mythology and the human side of Pennywise.

www.themovieblog.com

A PENNYWISE YOU’VE NEVER SEEN BEFORE​

While Bill Skarsgård’s return as Pennywise remains one of the show’s biggest draws, the creative team approached him from a new angle. “You will see a version of Pennywise that will surprise people,” Fuchs promised. “He is terrifying, but there is also something deeply tragic about him.”

Kane added that fans should prepare themselves for pure horror. “By the end of the season, things get intense. You have never seen Pennywise this dark before. Horror fans are going to eat it up.”

IT: Welcome to Derry Cast on Coming Face to Face with Pennywise and Taking the Story to 1962

And where the show will go next in later seasons

www.tvguide.com

In The Shining and Doctor Sleep, Dick is depicted as a kindly mentor figure, but as Chalk notes, in Welcome to Derry, "He's not a nice version of himself. Sometimes the kindest people are choosing to be nice. And I even think in that version, in the future, that's a choice. That's a conscious choice made through a lot of pain to be a kind human being. But Dick Hallorann, in this version, has no interest or no desire to be kind to anybody. And it's a journey of, 'Can I get out of this trap, this box, before I even have to deal with any of these people?' And the answer is like, 'Nah, you've got to deal with it,' and watching this man be unfolded upon is part of the journey."

The vast majority of Stephen King's books are set in a shared universe, with frequent crossovers that range from small references to major character appearances, and while Dick is Welcome to Derry's biggest tie to the larger "Kingverse," it's not the only one. Stephen Rider plays Hank Grogan, who gets into serious legal trouble — the specifics of which you'll need to wait and see — that threatens to send him to the infamous Shawshank State Prison.

On a fan level, Rider said he was thrilled to find out his character would be given this overt connection to The Shawhank Redemption, explaining, "It's my favorite Stephen King [story] and movie, so to be associated with it at all…" But things are different for his character, of course, because as Rider added, "Now, granted, Shawshank ain't the best place in the world. It's doom and gloom at Shawshank!" He added, with a chuckle, "When I'm on set, it was, 'OK, I love this, but do I got to get on this bus?' It's like Double Dutch. I want to jump in, but I want to jump out, you know?"

For those looking for more connections to King's larger work in the series, executive producer/co-showrunner Brad Caleb Kane promised, "We've peppered them throughout. We've peppered aspects of the macroverse, aspects of The Dark Tower, aspects of Insomnia, all those things you love; little Easter eggs from the Stephen King universe." However, he stressed that Welcome to Derry, "Doesn't exist to do that. It doesn't exist in the same way that [the Hulu series] Castle Rock existed, as a sort of crossover exercise for the entire Stephen King universe. We wanted to take the themes of the book and apply them to a different cycle when the monster comes out. So it's really about that and showing how the fears of 1962 are exploited by the monster and are exploited by the human beings at that time in America. And taking an idealized time in America and really scratching the surface and showing the reality underneath."

Meet the New Characters of 'It: Welcome to Derry'—Plus One Returning Stephen King Favorite

Chris Chalk, Stephen Rider, Jovan Adepo, and Taylour Paige on HBO’s eerie new horror series.

gizmodo.com

 

[Pennywise]