Showrunner Brad Caleb Kane says the HBO prequel’s second season is “bigger” — and Pennywise will be shown in a way audiences have never seen, ScreenRant reports.
By Becky — The Cinephile — CelebnMusic247
Pennywise is coming back — and he will not be quite the clown you remember. In an interview with Deadline, IT: Welcome to Derry showrunner Brad Caleb Kane confirmed that season 2 of the HBO prequel is moving at a steady pace following its official greenlight in August 2026, and he teased that the new season is “bigger” than the first, with Pennywise set to be shown in “a way you’ve never seen that character before,” ScreenRant reports.
“We’re writing the scripts. We’re about halfway through the writing of the scripts,” Kane told Deadline. “We have a production schedule, we’re greenlit for season 2, and Andy Muschietti’s out there casting.”
The change starts with the setting. Season 2 is expected to shift its focus to the Bradley Gang, the Great Depression-era bank robbers who end up trapped in Derry — one of the darkest interludes in Stephen King’s novel. Muschietti has also teased that the new season’s young characters will be “runaways or orphans,” a harder-edged group than the more suburban kids of earlier adaptations, ScreenRant reports.
That matters for Pennywise himself. The creature feeds on fear, and fear in 1935 is a different animal: hunger, dust, banks taking farms, families already living at the edge. Kane and the Muschiettis are building a season around people who have already survived some of the most tragic and disturbing things in life — which, by the show’s own logic, primes it to produce some of the most shocking versions of Pennywise yet.
Season 1, set in 1962 and premiered October 26, 2025, drew rave reviews and solid viewership, and it spent part of its run building a surprisingly sympathetic backstory for Bob Gray, the man Bill Skarsgård’s clown once was, before the entity took him. With that groundwork laid, ScreenRant notes, the creative team can now fully unleash the killer clown for the show’s return.
No premiere date has been announced. With writing halfway done and a production start expected in summer 2027, ScreenRant’s read is that the season would not reach HBO until around early 2028 — a gap of just over two years between seasons. More casting and plot updates are expected in the coming months as Muschietti’s casting search continues.
The 247 Take — A Pennywise who changes with the era is the most faithful Pennywise of all: in King’s book he was never one shape, he was whatever the town was afraid of. If season 2 leans into Depression-era dread, the scariest clown may be the one feeding on an entire country’s hunger.
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Sources: ScreenRant (Oct. 19, 2026), reporting Brad Caleb Kane’s interview with Deadline
