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New Welcome to Derry trailer introduces a Stephen King cinematic universe featuring The Shining, Shawshank Redemption, and an appearance from a young Pennywise

Lauren Milici

23 September 2025

There’s even a real-life nod to an Iowa theater famous for showing Carrie

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(Image credit: HBO)

A new trailer for IT: Welcome to Derry is here – and it’s a fever dream for Stephen King fans.

In the brief clip, which can be viewed below, there are two Stephen King Easter eggs, and two book-accurate elements of Pennywise’s backstory. The first Easter egg is a truck hauling away arrested men that says, you guessed it, Shawshank Prison aka the prison from The Shawshank Redemption. The second is a newspaper report about a young boy who went missing from the Capitol Theater – which was a real-life theater in Burlington, Iowa that closed down in 1977. The last movie the theater ever showed was none other than King’s Carrie. Did we mention that one of the stars of Welcome to Derry is Dick Hallorann, the head chef from The Shining?
If you’re unfamiliar with Hallorann’s connection to It, the novel explains that Hallorann opened a bar known as The Black Spot, which catered to Black soldiers and was subsequently burned down by a white nationalist hate group. Hallorann used his Shining ability to find and rescue survivors, one of them being Will Hanlon, father of main character Mike Hanlon (played by Chosen Jacobs in Andy Muschietti’s It). In Welcome to Derry, it’s LeRoy (Jovan Adepo) and Charlotte Hanlon (Taylour Pagie), Will’s parents, who moved to Derry from the military base where LeRoy was stationed.

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IT: Welcome to Derry | Official Trailer | HBO Max – YouTube

And that’s not all: at one point in the trailer, we see a black-and-white photo of a man in a suit who looks suspiciously like Pennywise. The man is none other than Bob Gray, one of Pennywise’s false human aliases from the novel. And speaking of the novel: we see Pennywise hit Earth in the form of a meteor! Whether we see his true giant spider form, however, remains to be seen.

It: Welcome to Derry is set to hit HBO and HBO Max on October 25. For more, check out our list of the best HBO Max shows to stream right now, or, check out our list of all the upcoming Stephen King movies and shows you need to know about.

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Lauren Milici

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Senior Entertainment Writer

Lauren Milici is a Senior Entertainment Writer for GamesRadar+ based in New York City. She previously reported on breaking news for The Independent’s Indy100 and created TV and film listicles for Ranker. Her work has been published in Fandom, Nerdist, Paste Magazine, Vulture, PopSugar, Fangoria, and more.

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The best Stephen King adaptations ranked, from Carrie to The Long Walk

Upcoming Stephen King movies and TV shows

Stephen King remake The Running Man gets star-studded first trailer, and the dystopian thriller looks like Squid Game meets John Wick

The Institute showrunners explain why the new Stephen King dystopian sci-fi TV series is more timely than ever: “Children shall inherit the earth, but first they have to save themselves”

Stephen King says “there’s a case to be made for Mike Flanagan being the Quentin Tarantino of horror” after finally watching The Fall of the House of Usher

New trailer for Stephen King’s The Long Walk picks up the pace in bleak future race

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