Stephen King‘s IT has remained one of the author’s best known novels for almost four decades thanks to its iconic depiction of its central villain as the clown Pennywise. Having been adapted into a successful and, at the time, terrifying miniseries in 1990, the story of Pennywise found a whole new audience when it was adapted into a two-part movie in 2017. While that seemed to be the end of the story for Pennywise HBO Max’s It: Welcome to Derry has proven that there’s still plenty of life in the Entity, and now Pennywise has become the eater of worlds, children, and streaming charts.
IT: Welcome to Derry has dominated HBO Max’s streaming chart since its debut last month, with the final two episodes ramping up the horror and suspense in a way that everyone hoped it would. However, while the series has been telling its own story – albeit based on King’s short interludes from the novel – the finale added some clever connections to the original movies, including the revelation of Marge being future Pennywise killer Richie Tozer, and a cameo from Sophia Lillis as Beverly Marsh. Now fans have been bingeing their way through Andy Muschietti’s two movies, sending them to the top of the HBO Max movie chart.
IT Chapter One and IT Chapter Two adapts Stephen King’s 1986 novel in a different way to the miniseries. While the 1990 version, which saw the untouchable Tim Curry assuming a role that really ramped up coulrophobia around the globe, incorporated parts of both the young Loser’s Club’s dealings with Pennywise with their adult counterparts being called by to Derry by Mike Hanlon, Muschietti’s movies created a distinct line between the two periods in Derry’s history.
The films enlisted strong casts, with the younger group including Lillis along with Jaeden Lieberher, Finn Wolfhard, Jack Dylan Grazer, and Chosen Jacobs, while the adult version of the group brought in A-listers including James McAvoy, Jessica Chastain, Bill Hader, and Isaiah Mustafa. Then, straddling both movies, there was, of course, Bill Skarsgard delivering a truly terrifying performance as Pennywise.
‘IT’ Continues To Be One of Stephen King’s Most Popular Creations
It is not up for debate that Stephen King knows how to tell a story, and sometimes, those stories are very long, very disturbing, and almost as eternal as the Entity known as It. While there have been too many iconic King characters to mention, Pennywise is the one that stands above all others in pop culture, and even those who are not fans of the author’s work, both in book form or on screen, will still know exactly who the clown is.
IT: Welcome to Derry was seen as a huge gamble in many ways. Dipping back into the world of Stephen King and attempting to develop a mostly new story around some very short chapters of IT could have gone very wrong, but it didn’t. The series managed to incorporate the kind of story that King himself would have written (over-bearing military types who believe they know best, comeuppance for characters who deserve it, devastating deaths for those who don’t) and even with some over-use of CGI effects, it mainly delivered on every level.
The success of the series, and the renewed interest in the 2017 and 2019 movies, has almost guaranteed that we will be seeing Pennywise return to screens again for at least another season of Welcome to Derry. Until then, rewatching the movies and series again is just as good to fill your Pennywise hole in the meantime.
- Release Date
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October 26, 2025
- Network
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HBO
- Directors
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Andy Muschietti
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