NEW YORK – One of the most successful supernatural horror film franchises of all time moves to the small screen with It: Welcome To Derry, now airing on HBO and HBO Max.

Based on the 1986 novel It by American author Stephen King, the series serves as a prequel to It (2017) and It Chapter Two (2019), which together earned more than US$1 billion (S$1.31 billion) at the box office worldwide.

The show is set in the 1960s – not long after the events of the book, which followed a group of children terrorised by an ancient evil that appears as the clown Pennywise, emerging from the sewers of their small Maine town, Derry, every 27 years.

The new story is told from the perspective of both adults and children, among them Leroy (Jovan Adepo) and Charlotte Hanlon (Taylour Paige) – whose grandson is the Mike Hanlon character in the films – and a bullied girl named Lilly Bainbridge (Clara Stack).

Director Andy Muschietti – who helmed the movies and developed the series with his sister Barbara Muschietti and showrunner Jason Fuchs – says It: Welcome To Derry is truer to King’s novel because of its timeline.

The first events of the novel take place in the late 1950s, but the first It film is set in 1988.

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