3 Stephen King Movies That Need a Prequel Series Like IT: Welcome to Derry

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The huge popularity of IT: Welcome to Derry clearly shows that horror fans are eager for more in-depth stories based on Stephen King’s work. The HBO series grabbed viewers by revealing the backstory of Pennywise (Bill Skarsgård), setting the story in 1962 – 27 years before the events of the IT movies. The show received high praise on Rotten Tomatoes and was a streaming hit for weeks because it didn’t just repeat the scares from the films. Instead, Welcome to Derry used the longer format of television to build a richer picture of the town’s dark past and the underlying problems that allow Pennywise to flourish, demonstrating that a prequel can be just as frightening as the original story when done well.

The success of the Welcome to Derry series proves that adapting more of Stephen King’s work in this way is a good idea. King’s stories are full of deep, historical lore and terrifying places, but movies often don’t have enough time to fully explore these complex backstories. While films are great for telling a concise story, they struggle to create the slow-burn, multi-generational fear that King is known for. A prequel series format solves this problem, giving creators the space to delve into the origins of these frightening elements and address any shortcomings in previous adaptations.

3) 1408

The 2007 movie 1408 is a suspenseful psychological thriller, but it only hints at the rich history surrounding the Dolphin Hotel. The film follows Mike Enslin (John Cusack), a writer who doesn’t believe in ghosts, as he tries to prove the infamous room 1408 isn’t haunted – only to experience terrifying and reality-bending events. The movie reveals the room has been linked to over 50 deaths, from suicides to strange accidents. The file detailing these deaths, read by hotel manager Gerald Olin (Samuel L. Jackson), feels like a perfect starting point for a scary anthology series. A prequel show could make the room itself the central character, with each episode or season telling the story of a different person who met their fate there. The show could also jump through time, showing how the room preys on people’s fears and traumas in different eras.

2) Needful Things

As a longtime Stephen King fan, I’ve always loved the core idea behind Needful Things – it’s brilliantly unsettling. However, the 1993 film adaptation just didn’t quite capture the book’s epic sense of escalating madness. The story revolves around Leland Gaunt, played with chilling charisma by Max von Sydow, who arrives in Castle Rock with an antique shop offering people exactly what they want…for a price. But the movie felt rushed, simplifying the clever, insidious way Gaunt turns the town against itself. Honestly, I think a prequel series would be fantastic. It could show Gaunt’s long, twisted history, revealing him not just as a shopkeeper, but as an ancient, timeless force who’s been subtly dismantling communities for centuries.

1) The Shining

The Overlook Hotel, with its chilling history, is the perfect setting for a series like “Welcome to Derry,” but a prequel called “Overlook” has been stuck in development for a long time. HBO Max, with J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot producing, initially worked on the series, but cancelled it in 2021. Although the creators tried to find a new home for it on platforms like Netflix, there haven’t been any updates on the project for years.

The planned Overlook series aimed to tell the story of how the hotel came to be, possibly using a prologue Stephen King wrote but later removed from the original novel. A new version of the show could center on the hotel’s construction in the early 1900s by wealthy businessman Bob T. Watson, highlighting the accidents and deaths that occurred during building. It could then explore the hotel through different eras, showing the lavish parties of the 1920s and the scandals that led to the ghostly figures seen in the movie—like the woman in Room 237 and the Grady twins. By emphasizing the hotel’s power to trap people’s spirits, the series would demonstrate that Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) wasn’t simply losing his mind, but was the newest in a long history of victims.

Besides Derry, what other setting from a Stephen King story is creepy enough to be the focus of its own TV series? Share your thoughts in the comments and join the discussion on the ComicBook Forum!

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2025-12-16 23:14