Stephen King sent a sweary email to the producers of It: Welcome to Derry – but it was for a positive reason

It: Welcome to Derry is just weeks away from hitting our screens. The new show is a prequel to the two-part film adaptation of Stephen King's iconic novel, and will see Bill Skarsgård reprise his signature role as Pennywise the Clown. Now, director Andy Muschietti and producer Barbara Muschietti have commented on the author's involvement with the new show – and detailed a very specific piece of feedback that he gave them.

Talking in the new issue of SFX magazine, which features It: Welcome to Derry on the cover and hits newsstands on Wednesday, October 8, Barbara described the author as "a big supporter" of the show, saying that "he really loves the movies." The duo made sure to keep the legendary writer up-to-date with everything that was happening on the project as they continued to work on it. "He gives us a lot of rope, and he's actually very enthusiastic whenever we show him new characters or new stories. He's been amazing," Muschietti continued. "It's just truly a pleasure."

One area where King gave them useful feedback was in some of the language used by the characters. "For Stephen, it's a very special era because it was the era where he was a child," Andy Muschietti adds. "He has a lot of insight of that era and his thoughts and notes are related to his experience as a child. Not only as the creator of the book, but in this back and forth that we have, there's a lot of details that you can not get unless you're talking to someone from that generation."

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One example of this involved some guidance on the sort of explicit language that would have been used in King's childhood. "One of the most special moments that we had in all these developments is Steve writing an email and saying, 'Well, we didn't use the word "f**k" a lot when we were kids. Actually, if you said "f**k" or "f***ing" in front of someone, you would expect to be knocked down.' So he wrote a whole email about the word "f***ing" because, of course, there's a lot of cursing in our movies."

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It: Welcome to Derry releases on October 26, on HBO Max. Read more in the latest issue of SFX magazine, which will be available from Wednesday, October 8. Here's the It: Welcome to Derry cover you need to be looking out for on newsstands below...