Although “IT: Welcome to Derry” has not received an official renewal from HBO, Season 2 remains in active development. It will explore another subplot planted in Stephen King’s 1986 novel that delves into Pennywise’s backstory.
“It’s 1935 – we’re now working on it, and it’s so much fun,” co-creator Andy Muschietti said during Deadline’s Contenders TV panel. “For the ones of you who read the books, probably the Bradley Gang sounds familiar. The Bradley Gang was a gang of bank robbers… They were on their way somewhere and they stopped in Derry to buy some ammo and something horrible happens.”
King drew inspiration from a ’30s-era true-crime incident in his Maine hometown. “The Bradley Gang is based on the Brady Gang, which is a real-life gang of robbers that were executed in the streets of Bangor, Maine. And we’re now creating the event, the big paroxysm of violence in this case will be the massacre of a Bradley gang,” Muschietti explained.
“There’s like three big events,” he noted. “In ‘Welcome to Derry’ Season 1, it’s the burning of the Black Spot. Massacre of the Bradley Gang [in Season 2]. And Season 3 would be the explosion of the Kitchener Iron Works, which is a big explosion during an Easter egg hunt where a hundred kids lost their lives. Pennywise is always there fucking around.”
Muschietti continued: “It’s fascinating, because the thing that is so much fun in this stage of development is that we’re facing an era which is the Depression Era that changes dramatically the setup of things. There’s no suburban comfort. The trope of the kids that live in suburbia and they ride their bikes and suddenly one of them disappears is nothing like this. This is in 1935. It’s a very dire situation. People are very poor. They’re struggling to survive, so the setup will be very different.”
Serving as a prequel to Muschietti’s IT films, “IT: Welcome to Derry” sees Bill Skarsgård reprise his role as Pennywise to explore the origins of the evil, shape-shifting entity.
“I had read this book many, many decades ago, and it was very close to me and very close to my heart,” Muschietti commented. “And there’s so many stories in that book that I couldn’t possibly cover in two movies.”
He added, “During the shoot of IT 2, we kept having these conversations about the possibilities of making an origin story of, how did Bob Gray become the clown? How did It become Pennywise? Who was Bob Gray? Bob Gray is one of the big enigmas in the book that are intentionally put there to create tension and are never solved. Our idea was to just open another window into that enigma.”
Ranked as one of Bloody Disgusting’s 10 Best Horror Television Series of 2025, “IT: Welcome to Derry” Season 1 is now streaming on HBO Max and hits physical media on May 5.