EXCLUSIVE: Pennywise, the world’s creepiest clown, is returning to the screen in HBO Max’s IT: Welcome to Derry. Andy and Barbara Muschietti, the Argentina-born producer-director pair behind the hit movies and now the series, tell us how they are making horror jump out of the small screen.
Season 1 of IT: Welcome to Derry is yet to launch, but the Muschiettis are already thinking about what comes next. With two It movies that have grossed north of a billion dollars under their belt, they are extending the universe into a series and already have plans for subsequent seasons.
Born in Buenos Aires, the brother and sister run two production labels, Double Dream and Nocturna, and their work spans blockbuster to indie fare. Guillermo del Toro helped them get their hit feature Mama up and running, and the pair says it is now their turn to discover new blood. Andy, meanwhile, is still on board Batman project The Brave and the Bold.
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“We are moviegoers,” Barbara says. “We see movies of every size and we grew up with movies of every size, and we want to continue telling stories that can be done on different sized budgets.”
Their story is not just movies. Next up is IT: Welcome to Derry, a series and prequel to their films. The origin story of the series dates back to when It: Chapter 2 was being made. Bill Skarsgård — who plays the killer clown Pennywise and also Bob Gray, his human alias — was talking to Andy Muschietti, who was directing. “Bill and I were fantasizing about the character of Bob Gray and an origin story,” Andy says. “There was an enthusiasm to go back and explore the complexities of this character.”
What started out as an idea for a movie ended up as a nine-part series that will stream on HBO Max from October 26. As with the films, the inspiration is Stephen King’s 1986 novel IT, about a group of kids terrorized by IT, an evil entity that transcends generations and manifests itself in the form of Pennywise. The creepy clown is a horror staple, but King’s version is surely the most iconic. Bringing terror to the fictional town of Derry (which is situated in the real-life U.S. state of Maine), there is, as with all great horror characters and monsters, a curiosity about Pennywise’s backstory.
“We never did TV before, but there’s a bunch of TV shows that mean a lot to me and I appreciate the format, having a bigger canvas to tell a story, and the impact that has on audiences,” says Andy. “Our love for the book, and the vacuum created by all these mysteries and question marks in it, mean you end up, as a reader, not understanding everything, including the mystery of IT. What is IT? What does IT want?”
IT has been adapted for the small screen before, with Tim Curry as Pennywise in the 1990 miniseries for U.S. network ABC. The new series takes a different tack, drawing inspiration from a series of five sections of King’s novel dubbed ‘The Interludes’, which delve into the history of Derry and a series of catastrophes that occur every few decades when IT awakens.
King endorsed the series when it was announced: “I’m glad Andy Muschietti is going to be overseeing the frightening festivities, along with a brain trust including his talented sister, Barbara. Red balloons all around!”
The Muschiettis developed the series with Jason Fuchs who, along with Brad Caleb Kane, serves as showrunner. Andy directs several episodes. He and his sister exec-produce through Double Dream. Other EPs include Skarsgård Fuchs, Kane, David Coatsworth, Shelley Meals, Roy Lee and Dan Lin, while HBO Max and Warner Bros. Television produce.
Deadline is a spoiler-free zone, but before the opening credits of the first episode of IT: Welcome to Derry, there is a scene destined to leave a lasting impression. It is both graphic and ingenious and sums up the tone and ambition of the series.
“We wanted to raise the bar higher in terms of shock value,” Andy says of the scene. “It’s about a self-imposed mandate of opening with an event that is shocking enough that you put the audience in a position where nothing is taken for granted, where nothing is safe in this world. You’re immediately putting people on the edge of the seat. We needed a strong opening. One of the things I love about this scene is the build-up. Of course, it has a big, graphic and shocking conclusion, but the build-up is something that was important.”
Nuclear Families
On screen, the titular town in IT: Welcome to Derry is a painstakingly constructed slice of American life in the early 1960s. It is also shown in the series’ remarkable credits. These start with different illustrations of down-home life that gradually give way to drawings of fires, mayhem and syringes plunged into eyeballs as a saccharin-sweet song from sisterly duo Patience and Prudence plays.
In the series, there’s a nearby military base and secrets seep out of that facility, and seemingly every corner of the town. Fear of nuclear war and its effects are close to the surface.
“It was very exciting to explore what the ’60s were in America, and what fear was and what kids were afraid of,” Andy says. “It was the Cold War and kids in school were performing drills in case of a nuclear explosion. You can’t imagine the state of paranoia. People were asking, ‘Is there going to be a nuclear explosion tomorrow? What are we going to do? Will there be people with birth defects?’ It was very exciting to think of those ripples.”
With Season 1 yet to drop on streaming, there is no official order or news of subsequent runs. But the Muschiettis hope to welcome people to Derry over several seasons. “There is an intentional bigger arc that will open,” Andy says. “My intention with this was to create a story that is a little bit like an iceberg under the water all through Seasons 1, 2 and 3. There will be an expansion in the mythology and more answers to the big questions.” The plan is to go further back in time, he reveals. “The second season will be in 1935. At the end of Season 1, we are hinting at the reason why we are going to tell the story in two more seasons and backwards.”
Horror, Heart & Humor
Andy says he first saw 1967 horror-comedy movie The Fearless Vampire Killers at age six, and by 11 he was delving into the likes of Sam Raimi’s horror classic Evil Dead. His sister is a couple of years older. Both were seasoned horror watchers from a tender age. Talking to the pair reveals a depth of knowledge and love for genre fare. Evil Dead, for example, taught Andy how to incorporate different tones and humor into stories, something evident in his movies and the new show.
“I understood the power of humor in horror, not necessarily for comedic purposes, but to get people on board, to get them thrilled in a different way,” he recalls. “There’s a very special feel when you see something that has a level of comedic sarcasm to it, and that becomes imprinted on you. It’s inevitable for us to infuse some humor in our work. The other side of that equation with IT is the book. It has horror, but it had heightened emotions, and also humor.”
There is a focus on the horrors created by humankind in the series, as well as those emanating from the supernatural. “The fog in Derry is not just a literal construction, it talks about how we often turn our backs to what’s going on and try to forget, to put things under the rug,” Andy says. At this point, Barbara chimes in: “What is definitely part of human behavior, and it’s absolutely horrific, is the ability we have to not see horrors as they’re happening.”
Banking on Horror: Double Dream & Nocturna
The Muschiettis have two labels. Double Dream, which has a deal with Warner Bros., and Nocturna. The latter was created last year with Skydance and is thusly connected to the studio system, more so after Skydance’s high-profile merger with Paramount. Nocturna’s raison d’être, however, is a focus on indie-flavored genre movies that exist outside of mega-budget studio franchises.
“Nocturna gives us some flexibility, and it is more for things that are maybe edgier,” Barbara explains, adding that in the time it takes to get a blockbuster movie up and running they can also work on a number of smaller budget projects. “For example, it took three or four years to get The Flash out and in the meantime there are so many more stories that we need to tell, and that we want to help other people tell.”
The Muschiettis were given a leg up by Del Toro, who liked their 2008 horror short Mama and helped get the 2013 feature-length version of the movie away. The film, starring Jessica Chastain, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, and Megan Charpentier and exec produced by del Toro, grossed a whopping $146 million off $15 million in production costs.
The Muschiettis now find themselves in a position to find and boost talent. “Barbara did a huge deal for Mama, creating a co-production with Spain, Canada and the U.S. We were partnered with Guillermo, who was basically the godfather of the project, and he introduced us to Universal, and with all those pieces together, the movie was done,” Andy says. “We want to continue that tradition. With very big movies, it is harder to give an opportunity to new filmmakers, but with smaller budgets, you can do that, and we didn’t want to let the opportunity of bringing new filmmakers to the scene go.”
Kirill Sokolov Movie
One film about to come out of Nocturna is They Will Kill You. Russian writer-director Kirill Sokolov (Why Don’t You Just Die!) is helming from a script he co-wrote with Alex Litvak. New Line is co-financing and releasing the pic, which stars Patricia Arquette, Zazie Beetz, Heather Graham, Myha’la and Tom Felton. The film follows a woman who answers a help-wanted ad for a housekeeper in a New York high-rise. There is, it transpires, a history of disappearances in the building, which houses a mysterious community.
In keeping with its indie sensibilities, Barbara says Nocturna moved fast, reading the They Will Kill You screenplay in December 2023 and filming by the following September: “We shot it in South Africa last year and we are very much near the finish line. It’s a lot of fun. It’s horror-comedy-action, and a great mixture and balance of those three. It’s something people will walk out of with a smile on their face, and it’s what the world needs right now.”
Argentina: Horror-Tango
The Muschietti siblings grew up in Buenos Aires and want to return to Argentina in a professional capacity, but not at present. The government of Javier Milei, Argentina’s far-right leader, has enacted a controversial plan to defund the National Institute of Cinema and Audiovisual Arts (INCAA), which is the country’s national film body.
Barbara says: “Right now, Argentina is going through its own very difficult times with cinema because the current government has basically decimated the National Cinema Institute, which was basically the main provider of funds.”
Andy has a movie he wants to make there, but it will have to wait. “We’re very connected culturally to Argentina because we were born and raised there,” he says. “There are so many stories to tell and one in particular that I really wanted to do. But, you know, it’s like, when will that happen? That’s probably not now.”
The movie in prospect has a distinctive Argentinian flavor. “It’s a story of my own and set in the 1930s. It combines the culture of tango with some supernatural presences, and there is another part that’s connected to the social and political background. It’s an action-horror movie and it would be black and white.”