IT: Welcome to Derry had an unusually late begin time for a San Diego Comedian-Con panel Saturday evening, not beginning till 9:15pm, however the preview these of us in attendance acquired of the present’s first 10 minutes shortly made it clear why this was footage you’d need to ensure little youngsters didn’t see. Within the subsequent Q&A, producers revealed plenty of new data in regards to the HBO Max prequel collection to 2017’s IT and 2019’s IT: Chapter Two, together with an enormous character crossover with one other Stephen King basic, The Shining.
Within the footage proven, we comply with a younger boy in 1962 Derry who will get in bother for misbehaving at a movie show – one thing that appears to be a typical incidence – after which, after working from an indignant usher, wanders down the highway on a darkish, snowy evening. It’s clear this child has some points, together with his face showing bruised, and with him continuously sucking on a pacifier, even if he appears to be about 10 years previous.
A automobile pulls over with a household inside, together with a mother and pa, their teenage daughter, and her youthful brother. They provide the boy a journey to Portland, Maine when he says he needs to go away Derry, besides issues shortly get very odd within the automobile, because the daughter opens up a container marked “Liver” and dips her fingers in blood after which holds her fingers as much as the boy as if she needs him to odor them.
Issues get a lot worse because the boy notices they’re one way or the other driving again into Derry, even because the household begins to disregard his cries to cease the automobile and let him out, appearing an increasing number of deranged. When he screams he needs out, they mock him by chanting “O-U-T!” time and again, inflicting him to panic and seize the steering wheel from the dad, inflicting a commotion that leads to them hitting the mother in her very pregnant abdomen… at which level she goes into labor, which is when she pulls up her costume and issues all of a sudden get very graphic.
Beneath her underwear, we see one thing is popping out of her, but it surely doesn’t look sometimes baby-shaped… after which the underwear is pulled away fully and we get an unobstructed view of this misshapen factor really being birthed from her and falling onto the passenger facet flooring.
We then get the total reveal of a demonic-looking, fanged child with bat-like wings… Who then all of a sudden leaps into the again of the automobile, inflicting everybody to scream besides Mother, who gleefully cackles, as she manipulates her umbilical wire to make the demon child transfer from one passenger to a different… earlier than it lastly lunges on the terrified boy, violently smashing his head into the window and presumably killing him, whereas inflicting the window to shatter and sending his pacifier flying out of his mouth and into the water to the facet of the highway.
We then see the pacifier start to drift right into a familiar-looking sewer, with a light-weight shining on the finish of it because the present’s brand comes up.
Watch the brand new trailer for IT: Welcome to Derry under:
You’ll love Derry a lot, you’ll by no means go away.#ITWelcomeToDerry premieres October 2025 on HBO Max. pic.twitter.com/ptRIpC2Emg
— HBO Max (@hbomax) July 27, 2025
After this very efficient (and surprising-for-Comedian-Con, given what we noticed) sequence was proven, sister-brother duo Andy Muschietti and Barbara Muschietti, who made the IT movies and now are producing the collection – with Andy additionally directing some episodes – took to the stage for a short however reasonably informative and tantalizing Q&A, the place the next was revealed.
-The present will discover the origins of how the entity often known as IT got here to tackle the type of Pennywise the Clown. This consists of revealing the importance of the identify Bob Grey in relation to Pennywise, after Stephen King talked about that identify within the authentic novel.
-It was Stephen King himself who instructed that every season of Welcome to Derry may go additional again in time to an earlier one among IT’s return appearances (which happen each 27 years). For now, the present must show to be successful for any future (or is that previous?) to be assured, however the plan is that Season 2 can be set in 1935 and Season 3 in 1908.
-Andy mentioned they have been utilizing a number of massive, catastrophic occasions in Derry’s historical past described within the books as central focal factors for the collection. Particularly, he talked about the burning of the Black Spot juke joint, the bloodbath of the native Bradley gang and the explosion of the Kitchener Ironworks, presumably with these occasions unfold out throughout these hypothetical three seasons.
-Barbara mentioned she was shocked at how gory and graphic they have been allowed to be on the collection, promising “Much more of that.” Andy was in all probability joking (however perhaps not!) when he added there can be “one full frontal after one other,” referring to the opening sequence’s most stunning visible.
-Welcome to Derry Character Leroy Hanlon (performed by Jovan Adepo) is the grandfather to Mike Hanlon from IT, one of many e-book and movie’s principal characters. Andy mentioned there can be different connections to the IT characters within the prequel collection, with some extra apparent or revealed extra shortly than others can be.
-The present can even embody at the least one character from the bigger Stephen King universe within the type of Dick Halloran, who was first launched in The Shining. Dick is talked about within the IT novel as a soldier who helped discovered the ill-fated Black Spot, which caters to native black troopers. He could have a bigger function in Welcome to Derry, the place he’s performed by Chris Chalk.
-The panel concluded with an early take a look at the following Welcome to Derry trailer. It’s a cool, appropriately ominous trailer, exhibiting extra glimpses of a household shifting to Derry and starting to find simply how harmful issues are, intermixed with glimpses of native lacking youngsters – and, as with the primary teaser, a ultimate shot of Pennywise himself, as soon as extra performed by Invoice Skarsgard. Acquainted IT sights just like the Neibolt Home and Pennywise’s wagon are additionally seen, together with yet another overt connection to different Stephen King tales by the use of a Shawshank Jail bus.
IT: Welcome to Derry premieres in October on HBO Max.
