Eight years after being released in theaters and becoming a box office phenomenon, IT is floating toward the top of HBO’s streaming charts. The 2017 movie adapts half of the original Stephen King novel, specifically the parts where the Losers Club are kids and are threatened by the evil entity commonly known as Pennywise.
IT became the highest-grossing horror movie of all time, earning $704 million worldwide. The success of the first film and its sequel, IT Chapter Two, eventually led to the prequel series IT: Welcome to Derry becoming a reality on HBO Max. Bill Skarsgård reprises the role of Pennywise as he terrorizes an earlier generation of Derry’s children.
Ahead of Welcome to Derry‘s October 26 premiere, IT is the fifth most-watched movie on HBO Max’s global streaming charts. The movie is in the fourth spot on the U.S. charts and in the top 10 for 39 different countries.
IT is ranked ahead of Materialists, Challengers, Valiant One, How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World, and Love Hurts. Only Weapons, Superman, The Substance, and I Know What You Did Last Summer are ahead of the Stephen King movie.
As a beloved horror movie, the Halloween season is a naturally popular time to watch IT, but interest is now further amplified by Welcome to Derry‘s release. With Skarsgård returning, along with the movies’ director Andy Muschietti and producer Barbara Muschietti, the 2017 and 2019 installments are closely tied to the prequel.
This includes staying consistent with the adjusted timeline from the movies. In the source material, the Losers Club are kids during the 1950s and adults in the 1980s, while in the films, they are kids during the 1980s and are adults in 2016. The prequel series is set in the 1950s, 27 years before the first movie.
Such consistency cements Welcome to Derry as a true prequel to the films, which makes it all the more important to rewatch or see the 2017 adaptation for the first time. With IT and IT Chapter Two on HBO Max, audiences only need one streaming service to watch the movies and all the prequel’s episodes, an advantage that many other franchises lack with their properties spread out across multiple streamers.
Welcome to Derry‘s reviews largely hail the series as a worthy expansion of the franchise so far. Just as IT is a streaming hit, the prequel will surely become a streaming success on HBO Max as well.
New episodes of IT: Welcome to Derry release on HBO Max on Sundays at 9pm ET/6pm PT.
