It: Welcome to Derry Season 2 Heads to 1935 With New Pennywise

Pennywise will come back looking like nothing viewers have seen before, and on a larger scale than Season 1.

That is the promise from Brad Caleb Kane, the writer-producer running It: Welcome to Derry into its second season. Kane told Deadline that Season 2 will be bigger than the first, with Bill Skarsgård returning as the killer clown.

Kane is now sole showrunner, meaning the person in charge of the series day to day, after sharing the job on Season 1 with Jason Fuchs. Scripts are about halfway finished. There is a production schedule in place, and Andy Muschietti is casting.

Season 2 moves the story to 1935, in the middle of the Great Depression. It centres on the massacre of the Bradley Gang, a group of bank robbers who stop in Derry to buy ammunition. That violent episode is part of the town history laid out in Stephen King's 1986 novel It.

Kane described the new season as a Warner Bros.-style gangster story. Expect bank robbers, Hoovervilles, street urchins riding the rails, and religious fundamentalism. Hoovervilles were the makeshift shantytowns where many jobless Americans lived during the Depression.

The time jump fits the structure of the series. Season 1 was set in 1962. Each season steps back another 27 years, matching the cycle of Pennywise's behaviour and appearances.

HBO renewed the series in August after a strong finish to Season 1. The Season 1 finale drew a series-high 6.5 million U.S. viewers in its first three days, according to Deadline.

For viewers, this means a colder, harder Derry next time. Same monster. A very different town around him.