Are you getting hyped for IT: Welcome To Derry yet? Well, you should be, particularly after this week. On Sunday, we reported on the story of how the brilliant Bill Skarsgård ended up getting called back to the role of Pennywise The Dancing Clown… and as if that wasn’t notable enough, the first reaction to the series arrived online from Stephen King himself (he calls it “amazing” and highlights the debut episode as being “terrifying”). Excitement for the upcoming King show is presently high, but there is something that audiences should know about the show ahead of its arrival in a few weeks.
The main story in this week’s edition of The King Beat concerns why fans shouldn’t anticipate that the first episode of IT: Welcome To Derry will be filled to the brim with Pennywise action, as there is a specific approach being taken with the killer clown in the new show. But that’s not all, as I’m also taking a quick look at how Stephen King movies have been performing at the box office this year. There’s a whole lot to discuss, so let’s dig in!
Prepare To Be Patient, As IT: Welcome To Derry Plans To Keep Us Champing At The Bit For Pennywise
“For 27 years, I've dreamt of you. I craved you! Oh, I've missed you!” That line, of course, is from IT: Chapter Two, and while it hasn’t been two-and-a-half-plus decades since that film came out, I think it’s nonetheless a fair assessment of how fans are awaiting the return of Pennywise in the new HBO series IT: Welcome To Derry. It was finally revealed that Bill Skarsgård would be reprising the evil role for the show in May 2024, and audiences have been anticipating the resurrection ever since – left to be satiated by minor glimpses of the sinister clown in trailers and previews.
The hunger is very real… which is probably why it’s a good idea to let audiences know now (a little over two weeks before the series premiere) that fans are going to have to be a bit patient when it comes to the revival of IT’s most famous form.
In an interview with SFX Magazine on CinemaBlend (the new issue is in stores now!), Welcome To Derry co-creators/producers Andy and Barbara Muschietti detail the methodology that was taken when it came to featuring Pennywise on the show, and the methodology can be described as “Jaws-esque.” The monster that feeds on fear is a shapeshifter that can take any number of forms, and Barbara Muschietti explained how the series is using that to its advantage:
People never know what to expect from Pennywise. That’s the trick. He’s absolutely unpredictable, and that’s what we love, and that’s the freedom we allow ourselves. We are never to know what trickery he’s going to do next.
Is that asking a lot of audiences in an age of immediate gratification? That’s to be seen – but it certainly is an extension of tradition in horror.
There is a long history of filmmakers flooding audiences with fear while also keeping them on the edge of their seats for the big monster reveal. While it’s worth pointing out that IT: Chapter One is not a movie that follows this formula (I’m sure I don’t have to remind any of you of the scene with Georgie’s encounter with Pennywise in the sewer), but Andy Muschietti says that the Jaws approach is being taken with the show – referencing the Steven Spielberg classic directly. Said the filmmaker,
It’s about a build-up of tension. In a series, it translates to basically not showing the monster in a movie until it’s the right time. It’s the Jaws effect. It’s very basic. The idea is building tension around the apparition of a monster that we know already, and people are waiting – when is it going to appear? It’s very appropriate for a monster that is a shapeshifter to appear in several different shapes and manifestations before he shows up as a clown. So I thought that was fun.
So what is the payoff? To keep the comparison to Jaws going, I imagine that anyone who has seen the movie will never forget seeing the shark pop out while Roy Scheider’s Brody is at the back of the Orca scooping chum into the water. We may all like and have grown accustomed to instant gratification, but delayed gratification has its big perks too, like satisfying ballooning expectations (yes, that pun was entirely intentional).
When we do finally get a full dose of Pennywise on IT: Welcome To Derry, Andy Muschietti promises that audiences will get that satisfaction, saying,
As a concept it was pretty basic to me that we would delay the apparition of the monster to create that good anxiety and suspense. When it appears, it appears in a big way. I thought it would be very gratifying for the audience to delay that climax.
This brings us to an important question: if the series isn’t going to be sending chills down our spines with the nightmarish visions of Pennywise, how is it going to be generating its scares? Looking back on the IT movies, you’ll remember that wasn’t an issue in the slightest, with its horrifying alternate forms including a rotting leper, a distorted woman from a Modigliani-esque painting, a monstrous Paul Bunyan statue, and much more.
In the interview, Barbara Muschietti acknowledges that there is a demand for every episode to offer up a fresh terror worthy of Pennywise’s brand, and the show aims to satisfy. She said,
When you’re doing several episodes, you have to make every episode pack a punch, basically. That was the hardest balance, to be able to hide Pennywise, but at the same time, create new incarnations and new fears that had a level that could get to a Pennywise-level of fear. Andy did a truly incredible job at that. We don’t see Pennywise for a while, but the things that we see are pretty damn incredible. And there’s so much more!
What does “a while” mean? Will we see the Dancing Clown in episode three? Episode five? Episode seven? That’s not made clear – but I suppose that not knowing when Pennywise will arrive will make it all the scarier when it does finally show up.
So, are you ready to float? With reports about the show first arriving in early 2022, the wait for IT: Welcome To Derry has been considerable, but it is now so close that we can practically smell the wastewater of the Derry sewers. Arriving as the penultimate Stephen King title of 2025 (following The Monkey, The Life Of Chuck, The Institute and The Long Walk), the show will be debuting on HBO starting October 26, and it will be made available to stream instantly for those with an HBO Max subscription.
Looking At Stephen King Box Office Numbers In 2025, Two Films Have Made The Top 20 List Of King’s Highest-Grossing Adaptations
With all of this discussion of IT, this week’s King Beat feels like an appropriate time to look at how Stephen King movies have been performing at the box office thus far in 2025. IT: Chapter One and IT: Chapter Two remain the highest-grossing titles of all time when it comes to King adaptations, making $704.1 million and $473.1 million respectively in 2017 and 2019, and now a new title has come anywhere near those blockbuster numbers, but how do the most recent titles stack up in the legacy?
Consulting the data from The Numbers, it turns out that two titles from this year have entered the Top 20 when it comes to worldwide box office grosses for Stephen King movies. The highest-grossing of the pair is Osgood Perkins’ The Monkey, which was made with a tiny budget ($10-11 million, per Vulture) but finished its big screen run in the early months of the year making $63.7 million. Without adjusting for inflation, that’s not quite as much as what Mike Flanagan’s Doctor Sleep earned six years ago ($72.4 million), but it eclipsed Rob Reiner’s Misery in the ranking.
More recently, Francis Lawrence’s The Long Walk entered the Top 20, and it’s worth noting that the critically acclaimed film is still playing in theaters nationwide. To date, the movie has made $43.9 million, which is good enough for it to be declared as the 18th biggest Stephen King movie of all time – having now made more money at the box office than Paul Michael Glaser’s The Running Man from 1987 ($48.1 million).
Will Edgar Wright’s upcoming remake of The Running Man, starring Glen Powell, be able to out-gross them all when it arrives in theaters on November 14? In just a little over a month.
That wraps up this week’s edition of The King Beat, but as always, I’ll be back here on CinemaBlend next Thursday with a brand new roundup of all the biggest news out of the world of Stephen King. And if you’re as excited as we are for IT: Welcome To Derry, you should most definitely pay close attention to the site in the coming weeks, as we’ll have a lot of exciting original interviews and features coming your way!
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