HBO’s IT Prequel Is Officially Changing Genres In New Stephen King Series Update

Published Oct 22, 2026, 9:55 AM EDT

Brennan Klein (he/him) is a senior news writer at Screen Rant, host of the Attack of the Queerwolf podcast, and contributor at Alternate Ending and Horror Press. He has been writing and podcasting about pop culture (especially horror movies) for over a decade at platforms including Blumhouse, Fangoria, Dread Central, The Backlot, and Arrow in the Head.

It: Welcome to Derry will follow Pennywise's lead and transform in season 2.

The HBO series is a prequel to 2017's It and 2019's It: Chapter Two, Stephen King adaptations which are the first and eighth highest-grossing horror movies of all time. Each season explores a different era in the history of Derry, the Maine town that serves as the hunting ground for the shapeshifting menace Pennywise (Bill Skarsgård), who can transform into victims' greatest fears but often takes the form of a clown. While season 1, which aired in 2025, took place in 1962, the upcoming Welcome to Derry season 2 is set even earlier, following the creature's previous rampage in 1935.

Entertainment Weekly recently sat down with Brad Caleb Kane, the co-showrunner of Welcome to Derry season 1 (with Jason Fuchs) and the sole showrunner of season 2. Kane, whose Friday the 13th prequel series Crystal Lake debuted on Peacock on October 15, is now in development on Welcome to Derry season 2, which is expected to begin shooting in mid-2027. He describes the season, which follows the massacre of the Bradley Gang that was teased in season 1, as having a "different palette," which he describes as "a Warner Bros. gangster picture through the lens of Pennywise and Stephen King."

Read his full comments below:

We’re making something very exciting for season 2 that I can’t talk too much about, but it’s got a different palette. It’s the Depression, it’s 1935. Beyond that, I can’t talk about it, but you can imagine a Warner Bros. gangster picture through the lens of Pennywise and Stephen King. That’s kind of what we’re doing... We’re deep into the writers’ room now. We have multiple scripts, we’ve broken more than half the story for season 2, and we’re edging into pre-production. Beyond that, I think I’ll get suffocated by somebody if I tell you too much more. But, yes, we are deep into it, and it is happening. It’s very exciting. It’s very, very bloody, and it’s very different from season 1.

As an HBO series, Welcome to Derry is a Warner Bros. property, so it's possible that Kane and the writing staff could be drawing specific inspiration from classic Warner Bros. gangster movies in terms of costuming, music, and various elements of the upcoming storyline. The studio produced a number of titles in the genre that would have been recent releases during the time period in which season 2 is set, including 1931's The Public Enemy and Little Caesar (both of which are Oscar nominees), 1933's Picture Snatcher and Lady Killer (both of which starred James Cagney), and 1935's 'G' Men.

However, while Kane promises that the show will take a very different approach from Welcome to Derry season 1, which had more of a Stranger Things atmosphere in the same way that 2017's It did, his tease that the season 2 will be extremely bloody does mean that it will be reminiscent of the previous season in certain ways.

Given the nature of the franchise, it's obvious that the horror genre will still be a major part of their palette. However, season 1 was especially brutal and violent, even opening with a shocking massacre where Pennywise kills multiple children. When gangsters come into town, it makes sense that the violence would be amped up even more, but the show already had a very high ceiling for blood, so the fact that it is being amped up pushes season 2 into full-tilt horror on top of its gangster genre leanings.

Even as It: Welcome to Derry moves its timeline further and further away from the eras in which the It movies are set (the late 1980s and the mid-2010s respectively), this commitment to switching things up is actually the element that makes it feel most of a piece with the rest of the franchise. The elastic nature of Pennywise is one of the most horrifying things about him, so introducing the entity to new characters and different contexts perfectly showcases his ability to be a threat to just about everyone in Derry.

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  Charlotte Hanlon

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  Jovan Adepo

  Leroy Hanlon

It: Welcome to Derry serves as a prequel to the 2017 film It, exploring the sinister history of Derry, Maine. Set in 1962, the series follows a family that relocates to the town amidst unsettling occurrences and the mysterious disappearance of a young boy.