IT: WELCOME TO DERRY’s Andy and Barbara Muschietti on Their Storytelling Model

Nerdist: What made you want to tell this specific story at this point in American history? 

Andy Muschietti: Our love for the book propelled us to keep thinking. It’s such a huge book with so many uncovered and interesting stories, including the origin of Pennywise. How did IT become Pennywise? There was an enigmatic knot there that I wanted to unfold… What we’re doing with this series is going in and unveiling certain things. So in a way we are ruining the magic of the book [laughs], but we’re telling this story for everyone that is curious about it, and we’re creating this compelling drama around it… In order to get there, we go through all the interludes of Mike Hanlon, who is the only guy who stayed in town, and all the reluctant losers to come back and fight evil.

Barbara Muschietti: In 2018 as we were shooting the second [IT] movie, we knew we wanted to explore more. And in 2020, Andy came up with the idea of doing it. It was a TV show format going backwards and basically having each season be in between a Pennywise cycle. That means that moving backwards 27 years. So we went into 1962 because it’s 27 years before our first movie in 1989.

Andy Muschietti: There’s a reason why we are going backward that will be revealed at the end, but there’s a little bit of a hint of that reason at the end of season one.

Interesting, can’t wait to see that. Now, you’ve previously said that the series has a three season arc, which kinda feels risky in today’s streaming culture where sometimes shows don’t get a chance to really play out their full cycle. Did that affect your choice to use this long-term storytelling format?

Andy Muschietti: We are not motivated by fear, so no, of course. You can’t really aspire to do something like that without belief. And of course we are human and there’s all kinds of obstacles along the way, but we really believed in this project and we put all of our energy into it and it turned out to be something pretty magical. I think people will dig it and they will want more, and if they want more, there will be more!