by: Chloe Wilson

Culture Editor

A new television adaptation of Stephen King’s novel It premiered on Oct. 26, and, like its predecessors, features the antagonist, Pennywise. These movies were all variations of the It franchise, released in 1990, 2017, and 2019. The new series, entitled It: Welcome to Derry, explores Pennywise’s origins in the fictional town of Derry, Maine, the setting of the previous movies.

The series includes eight episodes, each about an hour long, all set in the year 1962. The Welcome to Derry production team created both It (2017) and It: Chapter 2 (2019), two adaptations that audiences and critics received warmly. Fans of the series are satisfied with the adherence to the source material that the team showed in the previous movies. Chase Palmer, Cary Fukunaga, and Gary Dauberman wrote the two-part movie adaptations, which amassed $1.17 billion worldwide. This trio is notably one of the best teams at bringing King’s novels to the big screen, along with other writers who created Carrie, The Shining, Stand By Me, Misery, and The Shawshank Redemption, all of which were strong candidates for major Oscar categories such as Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Film Editing.

Welcome to Derry’s writers, keep faithful to the principles King showcases in his novels, maintaining his iconic timing, effects, and pace. The similarities among this new series and previous movies play a large role in maintaining the eerie ambiance for which King is so famous. 

The show features Major Leroy Hanlon (Jovan Adepo) and his wife Charlotte (Taylour Paige), along with their son Will (Blake Cameron James). The family arrives in Derry when Leroy is stationed at the local military base. Slowly, the show portrays inexplicable events such as children disappearing and characters experiencing horrifying visions. The show heavily focuses on fear, which is a driving force for the evil clown, Pennywise, who feeds off this emotion throughout his pursuit of havoc. It also touches on the horrors of their town, for example, the nature of evil in Derry. A pattern in the novel and its adaptations is that the absence of adult interference drives the children to bully and harm their peers and friends. This highlights the evil in Derry and makes the adults oblivious to Pennywise’s cruelty. 

Overall, viewers of the show are heavily anticipating future episodes of Welcome to Derry. After the immense success of the 2017 and 2019 movies, the show is on track to become a great thriller and provide even more closure and backstory for fans. The series releases new episodes every Sunday, hooking audiences as Derry’s haunting past is revealed and Pennywise’s origins come to the surface. The detailed storytelling adds to the topics that were previously touched on in the movie adaptations.

(Source: Forbes)