Welcome To Derry Confirms New Pennywise

IT: Welcome to Derry has confirmed Bill Skarsgård is returning for season 2, playing what showrunner Brad Caleb Kane calls “a different kind of Pennywise, Pennywise the way you’ve never seen that character before.”

Kane told Bloody Disgusting that the season moves to 1935, during the Great Depression, and adapts the Bradley Gang Massacre from Stephen King’s IT novel, in which an outlaw gang arrives in Derry and a bloodbath follows under Pennywise’s influence. Kane described the tone as a gangster story: “It’s a Warner Bros. gangster movie,” citing bank robbers, Hoovervilles, and street urchins as touchstones.

The scripts are about halfway finished, according to Kane, and Andy Muschietti is currently casting the season.

Season 1 of Welcome to Derry drew strong viewership for HBO, and the prequel series has leaned on Stephen King’s expanded Derry mythology for material. A new decade and a different take on the shapeshifting villain sets up a very different show from the 1962 setting of season one.