This weekend, HBO Max will premiere the first episode of IT: Welcome to Derry. This prequel series from Andy Muschietti and Barbara Muschietti, the brother-sister duo behind IT and IT: Chapter Two will give audiences gnarly new tales involving Pennywise the Dancing Clown. Now, fans of the hard-R-rated horror movies starring Bill Skarsgård as Pennywise might think they know what to expect from this new show. Cool, cool, cool. You're wrong.
Mashable's Entertainment team has been thoroughly gagged — in both ways — by IT: Welcome to Derry, which builds upon three interludes from Stephen King's novel IT. And while we won't share spoilers of the horrors about to unfold, we do want to give you a simple warning:
Don't plan to eat while watching the premiere episode of IT: Welcome to Derry.
Look, you might think you're too deep into horror, too big a King fan, too staunch in stomach to get it churned by a TV show. But first off, to quote an old but true motto, "It's not TV. It's HBO."
This is the network that gave us the corpsicle of True Detective: Night Country and the absolutely harrowing second season of The Last of Us. HBO originally stood for Home Box Office, but it could stand for Horror Bloody Outrageous.
As teased in Belen Edwards' review, IT: Welcome to Derry doesn't pull any punches when it comes to its grisly set pieces. And the first episode offers several absolutely gruesome sequences. So, do yourself a favor: Eat or snack well before you sit down for this deranged debut.
Beyond the stomach-churningness of it all, there's a lot of setup in this first episode you won't want to miss. And then there are moments so shocking and twisted you won't believe your eyes. So set aside the popcorn. Avoid anything red or bloody. Hey, maybe even avoid Cracker Jacks. Trust us.
There are some TV shows, like True Detective and Alien: Earth, that demand your full attention on a full stomach. Because otherwise, it's gonna be a rough night.
