Audiences will have to wait a little bit more to face Pennywise again, as Welcome to Derry, the prequel to the It film series, has been delayed to 2025. According to Variety, Casey Bloys, chairman and CEO of HBO and Max Content, stated that the series would come out later than expected due to production hiatus they had to take because of the dual strike organized by the Writers Guild of America and SAG-AFTRA. As soon as the performers’ guild reaches a deal with the AMPTP, filming can resume on the new story featuring the scary clown viewers have come to know and hate for years.

The series will follow a group of kids haunted by Pennywise years before the events of the 2017 film directed by Andy Muschietti took place, as the cycle that allows the monster to feed once again unleashes the killer on the people of Derry. While it has been established that the antagonist created by Stephen King will be the unstoppable force the main cast will have to face in the story, it was reported earlier this year that Bill Skarsgård won’t reprise the role he brought to life in the two parts of Muschietti‘s adaptation of the book.

The cast of Welcome to Derry will include Jovan Adepo, Chris Chalk and Taylour Paige, as yet another group of victims falls in the claws of the creature that doesn’t belong in the town. The show was announced while HBO was trying to expand its Max slate, and while everything moved in a relatively smooth manner throughout the development process, filming had to be stopped because of the SAG-AFTRA strike that’s still taking place. When studios decide to pay their employees what they have earned with their hard work, production can be completed, bringing the prequel one step closer to television screens around the world.

When Does ‘Welcome to Derry’ Take Place?

The upcoming prequel has been stated to take place during the 1960s, and that makes sense considering how Pennywise behaves in both the book and film versions of his story. The clown has been established to come out every twenty-seven years, and if he took Georgie’s (Jackson Robert Scott) life in 1988, it would mean that Welcome to Derry would explore the feeding cycle’s manifestation previous to the ones seen in the movies. Years before Pennywise tried to go after Beverly Marsh (Sophia Lillis) and Richie Tozier (Finn Wolfhard), he went after the children of Derry, as the town continues to believe that their history is cursed.

Welcome to Derry is currently scheduled to premiere on Max in 2025.

via Collider