HBO Max is floating its first official teaser trailer for Welcome to Derry.
The upcoming series is a prequel to the hit IT films which adapted Stephen King‘s horror masterpiece about a small town in Maine that’s cursed by the presence of a shapeshifting killer clown which returns to murder a slew of children every 27 years.
The trailer (below) introduces a new cast of young characters living in Derry in the 1960s.
The show was developed by IT filmmakers Andy Muschietti and Barbara Muschietti along with Jason Fuchs who serves as co-showrunner with Brad Caleb Kane. Andy Muschietti directed four of the season’s nine episodes.
Bill Skarsgård has returned to play Pennywise the Dancing Clown, a villain that King fans agreed the actor embodied to perfection, after initially turning down the chance to continue the character. In an interview earlier this year, Skarsgård assured the TV version is “hardcore.”
“I felt like I was done with it,” Skarsgård explained. “Also, because I was shooting [Nosferatu], it just felt like, ‘Okay, this is the nail in the coffin on my monster roles. But it’s Barbara and Andy, and I love them … and I enjoyed it more than I thought I would. We got to explore different sides of old Pennywise. There’s some cool stuff in there that we haven’t seen.”
The rest of the cast include Taylour Paige, Jovan Adepo, Chris Chalk, James Remar, Stephen Rider, Madeleine Stowe and Rudy Mancuso.
Executive producers include Fuchs, Kane, Skarsgård, David Coatsworth, Shelley Meals, Roy Lee, and Dan Lin.
