The huge box office success of horror movies IT Chapter One and IT Chapter Two has naturally led to ideas about how the series can continue.
The remake of IT grossed a whopping $701 million and received critical acclaim, and although IT Chapter Two received mixed reviews, the gross from the sequel took the overall box office from the two movies to well over $1 billion.
Talks of a sequel or prequel began almost immediately after the release of the second movie, and it appears we will see the latter, as it has been confirmed that a series will be produced for HBO Max entitled Welcome to Derry which will focus on the origins of Pennywise.
Stephen King, who has never been shy about criticising adaptations of his novels, was warm to Chapter One and Chapter Two, and it seems like he is open to seeing more of an earlier incarnation of Pennywise in a prequel.
“I think that when I die I will kind of disappear from the paperback racks. But that f***ing clown is going to live forever," he told Bloody Disgusting.
"Well, I don’t have a relationship to Pennywise now. Because I have no intention of going back to IT, it’s in the hands of people who are doing this. Andy and Barbara are going to do ‘Welcome to Derry,’ they’re talking about it anyway.
"And they’ve got sort of a handshake deal, I think, with HBO Max. It’s an interesting possibility to do that. They talked about a prequel. Which struck me as an okay idea.
"I’d love to see what Pennywise was up to 27 years before the ’50s. Or, I guess it would be the ’80s because they updated the . So it would be, you know, before World War 2 or something. It’ll be interesting to see what will happen with that.”
Will Bill Skarsgård return as Pennywise?
While it is extremely likely that Bill Skarsgård will reprise his role as Pennywise in Welcome to Derry, there hasn't been a confirmation as of yet.
Encouragingly, though, he has previously stated a desire to don the makeup again should the story be worth telling.
"It would have to be the right type of approach to it," he said in 2019.
"The book ends where the second movie ends, so that is the final chapter of this story. There is this interesting aspect of going back in time before all this happened.
"There might be a story there that might be worth exploring. Obviously that would be a story that's not in the book, it would be a freestanding story, but obviously within the same universe. So, there might be something interesting out of it.
"I think it would be fun."
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