Posted in: HBO, Max, Movies, TV | Tagged: it: welcome to derry, welcome to derry

It: Welcome to Derry EP on Opening Episode's "Red Wedding" Moment

It: Welcome to Derry EPs Andy Muschietti and Barbara Muschietti and co-Showrunner Jason Fuchs on the opener's big "Red Wedding" moment.

We're still stunned by the opening chapter of filmmakers Andy Muschietti and Barbara Muschietti and Showrunners Jason Fuchs and Brad Caleb Kane's It: Welcome to Derry. Before we get to the why, just a quick reminder that the second episode will be available to stream on HBO Max on Halloween (Friday, October 31, at 12 am PT/3 am ET), with the episode premiering on HBO as scheduled (Sunday, November 2, at 9 pm ET/PT). Okay, now that we've got that out of the way, we're getting some insights into this weekend's episode, and that shocking, game-changing (seriously, no cliche here) ending. We won't be doing deep dives into spoilers, but we're throwing on the "MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD!" sign and dropping an image spoiler buffer because we will be identifying bodies…

Yeah, it was brutal. The opening scene introduced Matty (Miles Ekhardt), only for him to be killed (for lack of a better phrase) in a truly horrific way. But that was just the opening salvo. Matty's classmates, Lilly (Clara Stack), Ronnie (Amanda Christine), Phil (Jack Molloy Legault), Teddy (Mikkal Karim-Fidler), and Susie (Matilda Legault), join together to get some answers. Let's just say that it did not go well, leaving only a severely wounded Lilly and Ronnie as the survivors – and a whole lot of viewers left staring at their screens, uttering, "Did they just f***ing kill the 'Losers Club'?"

"We love it," Barbara Muschietti shared during a profile interview with EW, comparing it to a famous/infamous shocking moment from HBO's Game of Thrones. "It's our Red Wedding." Andy Muschietti added, "This is strategically a devastating event to set the audience into that sense of 'nothing is safe in this world.' We kind of trick the audience into thinking that these are the new Losers. Well, guess what? I guess they're all dead."

"It was a product of that mini room experience where we decided, 'What if this happened?'" Fuchs revealed, offering some insights into the mini writers' room consisting of Fuchs, Kane, and the Muschiettis. Interestingly enough, the kids lived at the end of the original script for the pilot. "So the network didn't know that was going to happen in the context of the pitch. We had a wall with headshots of child actors who would've played the kids in [episode] 101. Andy theatrically stood up as I was pitching. I got to the part where all of them, other than Lilly and Ronnie, being eaten. Andy pulled the paper down, and there was a whole other group of kids [headshots] under there. I'll never forget seeing their faces and feeling like, 'If we can replicate their reaction in the room with audiences at home, we'll have a really interesting, exciting, satisfying way to end episode 1.'"

Barbara Muschietti admitted that they were expecting some pushback from the network when it came to how far they were pushing things regarding horror and the scare factor. "We went in [thinking] that will be the fight for us, we're gonna have to fight to keep on pushing the horror and push the jump scares. It was the opposite," she added, noting it was a "huge relief" to get the support.

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