The Creepiest Thing About the 'Welcome to Derry' Trailer Isn't Pennywise

The trailer for HBO Max’s Welcome to Derry dropped early this morning, and while Bill Skarsgård’s Pennywise makes a brief appearance, it’s that cop above that gives me the willies. There is, indeed, a couple of Smile-like shots in the trailer to live in your brain for a few hours.

Welcome to Derry is the prequel to It, set 27 years before the events of the It films. In addition to Skarsgård, it stars Taylour Paige, Jovan Adepo, Chris Chalk, James Remar, Stephen Rider, Madeleine Stowe, and Rudy Mancuso. The director of It, Andy Muschietti, returns as an executive producer; Jason Fuchs wrote the first episode, and Brad Caleb Kane (Tokyo Vice) is the showrunner (he will also showrun Linda Cardellini’s Friday the 13th series, Crystal Lake.)

“It’s a story that’s based on the interludes of the book. The interludes are basically chapters that reflect Mike Hanlon’s research,” Andy Muschietti explained on Radio TU earlier this year. “So they talk about catastrophic events from the past, like the fire in the Black Spot, the massacre of the Bradley Gang, a gang of bank robbers in the ’30s, and the explosion of the Kitchener Ironworks. Every time Pennywise comes out of hibernation, there is a catastrophic event that happens at the beginning of that cycle … We are basing the three seasons of this series on each of these catastrophic events.”

Here’s the trailer.

Welcome to Derry arrives this fall on HBO Max.