You’ll float too.
“It: Welcome to Derry,” HBO’s chilling new prequel to Andy Muschietti’s blockbuster “It” films, premieres Sunday night, diving deep into the dark origins of Stephen King’s Pennywise.
Set decades before the Losers Club faces off against the killer dancing clown, the series explores how evil first took hold of the cursed Maine town, and what twisted forces have been feeding on fear there ever since.
But while the story unfolds in fictional Derry, Maine, the show’s eerie atmosphere was once again conjured up just north of the border.
“We were just outside Toronto the whole time,” Stephen Rider, who stars as local Hank Grogan, told The Post. “Which was cool because a lot of the places they used were the places that they used for the films.”
The continuity between film and series didn’t just help establish the mood, however, because it gave the new cast a sense of stepping into a legacy as well.
“It is pretty cool,” added Chris Chalk, who portrays Dick Hallorann, the younger version of the psychic cook first introduced in King’s “The Shining” novel. “The privilege of being in something that’s already established is that everybody’s all like, ‘Come on in! You’re in it now!’”
“It’s not like other shows, when you’re establishing a show, they’re like, ‘Get out of here! I haven’t heard of it!’” the “Perry Mason” star, 47, laughed. “So it was really nice to go back with mostly the same crew and the same company. We were so well taken care of.”
That same familiarity extended to the set itself.
James Remar, 71, said revisiting the franchise’s longtime filming location of Port Hope, Ontario, was like walking through a place that never aged.
“The town changed very little. The storefronts and all that. We shot in the same place, Port Hope, outside of Toronto, and it looks the same as it did in the 80s,” Remar, who portrays military man General Shaw, told The Post.
“The cars are different, but much of it is the same,” he continued. “There’s this railroad trestle that goes by. There’s this wonderful sequence where the kids are going to the quarry, and the train is in the background, and that’s all still there.”
For the “Dexter” alum, the experience felt almost supernatural. “When I stepped onto that set, even though it’s supposed to be many years earlier, I felt like I’d been there before,” he shared.
While the original 2017 film and its 2019 sequel jump back and forth between 1989 and 2016, the prequel is predominantly set in 1962.
Kimberly Guerrero, another new cast member to join “Welcome to Derry,” noted that filming in one of the franchise’s most memorable locations carried a different kind of weight for her as an actress.
Guerrero plays Rose, the owner of Second Hand Rose, the same antique shop where King famously made his cameo in “It Chapter Two.”
“For me, it was really this meta moment because one of my favorite moments in the movie is when King makes an appearance,” the “Montana Story” star, 58, shared. “He makes an appearance in Second Hand Rose.”
“So to get to play Rose and to get to be in that exact space…and I believe I’m even sitting on the side of the counter where Stephen was sitting,” she added.
The emotional connection, Guerrero explained, went beyond nostalgia.
“So it felt very intentional and really profound to get to be in that space, because this space holds that energy,” she told The Post. “It remembers that story.”
“It was a real gift to get to circle back and join in on the story that’s already being told and even take it deeper and take it back further,” Guerrero added.
That spirit of return, to both a place and a story, was there from the start. Muschietti, who co-directed “Welcome to Derry” alongside his sister Barbara Muscietti, revealed that the idea for a prequel began forming before “It Chapter Two” even wrapped production.
“We didn’t want to say goodbye,” the “Flash” filmmaker, 52, said. “I was having conversations with Bill Skarsgård about how cool it would be to tell the story of the origins of Pennywise, how It became a clown. When did that happen?”
Skarsgård, who portrayed Pennywise in the 2017 and 2019 films, is the only original cast member to return for “Welcome to Derry.” He also serves as an executive producer for the series.
Muscietti, meanwhile, acknowledged that the idea for a prequel still lingered long after filming on the sequel ended.
“Because that’s one of the big question marks and is not represented in the book,” the “Mama” director told The Post regarding Pennywise’s origin. “And we were just fantasizing about making a movie.”
“And that evolved later, into the idea of making it into a series that comprised a bigger, fuller story that would give more justice to the entire story told in the book,” he explained, “but also an opportunity to answer a lot of the questions and cryptic messages not answered in the book intentionally.”
“And that’s how it all started,” Muscietti shared.
Showrunner Jason Fuchs, who worked closely with the Muschiettis on the “It” sequel before returning for “Welcome to Derry,” remembered those early brainstorming sessions well.
“I was lucky enough to get invited to help on ‘It Chapter Two,’” he began. “Way back when, they were about to start production on that. So I came in and was working on it essentially through the whole shoot.”
“As we were making that film, there were some conversations about doing a third film, a prequel that would revolve around sort of the origin story of Pennywise, and it was never a super serious conversation,” the “Flipper” actor, 39, said. “It was more just a what-if, wouldn’t this be cool?”
But those “what ifs” became something much more a bit later on down the line.
“Those conversations kind of subsided for a variety of reasons. It didn’t feel like the right version of that story to tell,” Fuchs told The Post.
“I would say about a year or so later, I was working on something else with Andy and Barbara,” the “Argylle” writer remembered. “I was walking into the Warner Bros. parking lot, and Andy, almost as an afterthought, said to me, ‘Hey, would you want to do an It prequel series?’”
He recalled that the answer to Muschiettis’s question came to him almost instantly.
“I just thought that sounded like the most amazing idea ever,” Fuchs gushed. “It was the easiest yes of my career, and we built it from there.”
Rounded out by cast members Jovan Adepo (Leroy Hanlan), Taylour Paige (Charlotte Hanlan), Blake Cameron James (Will Hanlon) and Rudy Mancuso (Pauly Russo), “It: Welcome to Derry” premieres on HBO and begins streaming on HBO Max on Sunday, Oct. 26.
