MOVIE NEWS – Stephen King has said he does not want to adapt IT into a new novel and will not be involved in the new prequel series, but he is looking forward to seeing it.

Fans of Stephen King have been wondering for some time whether the writer would ever return to the town of Derry and the creature known as “IT”, but it seems they shouldn’t hold out much hope for a new Pennywise-centric novel, as King revealed that he doesn’t “have a relationship to Pennywise now.” The writing legend’s comments on Bloody Disgusting’s The Losers Club Podcast suggest that he doesn’t seem to have a say in the Welcome To Derry prequel for HBO Max, but as a fan, he’s looking forward to it.

Stephen King’s epic 1986 novel IT was initially adapted as a TV miniseries in 1990, with Tim Curry’s famous performance as the demonic clown Pennywise.

While it remains one of the most iconic Stephen King adaptations to date, the two-part film version released by Warner Bros. in 2017 and 2019 offered a more brutal take on the novel, and despite some flaws, the film was a massive success in cinemas. This obviously means that Warner Bros. now wants to continue the story of IT in the form of a prequel series, which Andy and Barbara Muschietti are currently developing.

On The Losers Club Podcast, Stephen King was asked if he had any plans to return to the world of IT in a future novel, and he eventually revealed that he had no such plans and that he was not part of the team working on the prequel series. He said:

“Well, I don’t have a relationship to Pennywise now, because I have no intention of going back to IT…”

“…it’s in the hands of people who are doing this… Andy and Barbara [Muschietti] are going to do ‘Welcome to Derry,’ they’re talking about it anyway. And they’ve got sort of a handshake deal, I think, with HBO Max. It’s an interesting possibility to do that. They talked about a prequel. Which struck me as an okay idea. I’d love to see what Pennywise was up to 27 years before the ’50s. Or, I guess it would be the ’80s, because they updated the [setting]. So it would be, you know, before World War 2 or something. It’ll be interesting to see what will happen with that.”

Although Pennywise has only appeared in one novel, the character’s mythology and eventual return have popped up in several of Stephen King’s other works, so it’s no surprise that many expected King to continue tackling this excellent source material for nightmares in some form.  One of the most notable references occurred in King’s 2001 novel Dreamcatcher when the central characters visit Derry and discover the inscription ‘Pennywise lives’ on one of the walls. Although it now looks like we’ll be getting more Pennywise in HBO’s Max prequel series, King, like everyone else, will just be one of the viewers waiting to see where the story goes…

Source: The Losers Club Podcast