New Welcome to Derry trailer introduces a Stephen King cinematic universe featuring The Shining, Shawshank Redemption, and an appearance from a young Pennywise

Bill Skarsgard as Pennywise's alter ego Bob Gray in It: Welcome to Derry

(Image credit: HBO)

A new trailer for IT: Welcome to Derry is here – and it's a fever dream for Stephen King fans.

In the brief clip, which can be viewed below, there are two Stephen King Easter eggs, and two book-accurate elements of Pennywise's backstory. The first Easter egg is a truck hauling away arrested men that says, you guessed it, Shawshank Prison aka the prison from The Shawshank Redemption. The second is a newspaper report about a young boy who went missing from the Capitol Theater – which was a real-life theater in Burlington, Iowa that closed down in 1977. The last movie the theater ever showed was none other than King's Carrie. Did we mention that one of the stars of Welcome to Derry is Dick Hallorann, the head chef from The Shining?

If you're unfamiliar with Hallorann's connection to It, the novel explains that Hallorann opened a bar known as The Black Spot, which catered to Black soldiers and was subsequently burned down by a white nationalist hate group. Hallorann used his Shining ability to find and rescue survivors, one of them being Will Hanlon, father of main character Mike Hanlon (played by Chosen Jacobs in Andy Muschietti's It). In Welcome to Derry, it's LeRoy (Jovan Adepo) and Charlotte Hanlon (Taylour Pagie), Will's parents, who moved to Derry from the military base where LeRoy was stationed.

IT: Welcome to Derry | Official Trailer | HBO Max - YouTube

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And that's not all: at one point in the trailer, we see a black-and-white photo of a man in a suit who looks suspiciously like Pennywise. The man is none other than Bob Gray, one of Pennywise's false human aliases from the novel. And speaking of the novel: we see Pennywise hit Earth in the form of a meteor! Whether we see his true giant spider form, however, remains to be seen.

It: Welcome to Derry is set to hit HBO and HBO Max on October 25. For more, check out our list of the best HBO Max shows to stream right now, or, check out our list of all the upcoming Stephen King movies and shows you need to know about.