It: Welcome to Derry director-producer duo Andy and Barbara Muschietti were surprised, but grateful nonetheless, to get the all-clear from HBO for the horrific opening scene from episode 1.
Warning: Mild spoilers for It: Welcome to Derry episode 1 below!
"Well, there's a tradition of starting with a kick in the balls a little bit to just establish a little bit of what you will expect in terms of tone and style, but also to have people understand that nobody is safe in this world," Andy said at a NYCC roundtable attended by GamesRadar+. "They love the ticking clock, by the way. So that was the idea, not only in the first 10 minutes, but also in a bigger fashion for the rest of the show at the end of episode one, which you saw."
The upcoming prequel series takes place in 1962, and centers on not only one of the first iterations of the Losers Club, but of the grandparents of modern-day Losers Club member Mike Hanlon. In fact, the show is based on all of the intense research Mike did on Derry, which included Pennywise's human form Bob Gray making an appearance in that deeply cursed Maine town. The first ten minutes of episode one are some of the scariest, most jarring moments of television ever aired – and I deeply wish I was exaggerating.
"Personally, as we were shooting it, I was thinking, I don't think they're gonna let us air this. I think there's gonna be scissor-hands everywhere," Barbara added.
Much like the beginning of the Muschietti's It and It: Chapter 2, there is no breathing room. We start off with something nightmare-inducing...and the rest of the season only amps up from there. Without giving too much away, let's just say that evil is...born. Literally.
"Because it's very graphic, like the places where the camera is; it's basically a very frontal angle of childbirth and anatomy, and also a lot of gore," Andy quickly explained.
Continued Barbara: "We didn't know that we would get away with it, but we had the full support of HBO and everything that was graphic horror and body horror. We're very lucky."
Co-showrunner and head writer Jason Fuchs says he wrote the opening scene with the intention of giving us all nightmares, with co-showrunner Brad Caleb Kane calling it the perfect metaphor for the entire series.
"I think that the opening sequence of the pilot is probably my favorite – it's one of the first things I wrote when I started writing the show," Fuchs explained. "And it just feels like the birth of a new generation of it terror, quite literally if you've seen the sequence. It takes advantage of the fear and terror of that moment. It's obviously a show set in 1962, in the context of the Cold War. Fears of nuclear war, fears of nuclear radiation, and so to be able to do something that sort of spoke to that felt pretty exciting. And it goes in directions you're not expecting, and it is even more extreme in execution than it was on the page."
"I love it so much because it sets the tone for the metaphor of the show, which is, you know, here's this perfect American nuclear family," Kane added. "It's what you see on the surface, but you scratch a little deeper, you scratch the surface and see the rot underneath. And that's more of the reality of what we're facing in the show. Everything is very gleaming and perfect on the surface, but dig a little deeper and you're gonna see that it is controlling everything, and it's pretty horrific underneath. I like that as a metaphor for the show as a whole."
Bill Skarsgård reprises his role as Pennywise from Muschietti's films, with the cast including Jovan Adepo as Leroy Hanlon, Chris Chalk as Dick Hallorann, Taylour Paige as Charlotte Hanlon, James Remar, and Stephen Rider. The aforementioned Hanlons are the parents of Losers Club member Mike Hanlon, and Dick Hallorann is, well, the very same Dick Hallorann from The Shining. In fact, two scenes shown behind closed doors at NYCC see Dick tap into some of his Shining ability...which leads him to come face-to-face with Pennywise.
It: Welcome to Derry hits HBO Max on October 26. For more, check out our list of the best HBO Max shows to stream right now, or, check out our guide to all of the upcoming Stephen King movies and shows you need to know about.
