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It: Welcome to Derry: King Offers "Spinal Tap"-Themed Episode 3 Tease

Stephen King teased It: Welcome to Derry Episode 3 "ratchets up the horror" and dropped a "This Is Spinal Tap" reference to make his point.

With only hours to go until filmmakers Andy Muschietti and Barbara Muschietti, and Showrunners Jason Fuchs and Brad Caleb Kane's It: Welcome to Derry S01E03: "Now You See It" hits screens (our updated preview goes live shortly), we're hearing from someone about tonight's episode whose opinion regarding horror carries a whole lot of weight. On Sunday, bestselling author Stephen King teased that tonight's episode "ratchets up the horror," and even dropped a This Is Spinal Tap reference to further drive home his point. "As Nigel Tufnel would say, 'This one goes to eleven," King added.

Here's a look at what King had to say earlier today about tonight's episode:

It: Welcome to Derry Season 1 Episode 3: "Now You See It" Preview

It: Welcome to Derry Season 1 Episode 3: "Now You See It" – General Shaw pushes ahead with his mission, ordering Leroy and Pauly to escort Dick Hallorann on an aerial search for a new dig site; Rose attends a tribal meeting; Ronnie, Lilly, Will, and Rich attempt to get visual proof by conjuring an Orixá. Directed by Andy Muschietti and written by Guadalis Del Carmen & Gabe Hobson.

EP, Co-Showrunner on Opening Episode's "Red Wedding" Moment

Yeah, the final moments of the first chapter were 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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