New Stephen King TV Show Finally Breaks a Major 2025 Trend (& the Timing Is Perfect)

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Stephen King is famous for writing scary books and his stories often inspire frightening movies like The Shining, Misery, and Carrie. 2025 almost became “the year of Stephen King” with four new movies and two TV shows planned. Interestingly, these releases weren’t horror stories at all. However, that’s starting to change this month, and fans of scary Stephen King content are finally getting the thrills they were hoping for, just in time for Halloween.

The new horror series, It: Welcome to Derry, premiered on HBO Max in October and is currently providing more thrills and chills than any other Stephen King adaptation this year.

Stephen King’s 2025 Releases Have Not Been About Horror, Until Now

Several Stephen King adaptations were released in 2025, but surprisingly, none of them were particularly frightening. The Monkey came the closest, though it was more of a gory and humorous horror-comedy than a truly scary movie. The other two films were quite different: The Life of Chuck was an uplifting drama, and The Long Walk was a psychologically intense horror story with a bleak tone. While all three were well-made, none of them aimed to terrify viewers.

Stephen King fans have another movie coming out soon: The Running Man. However, don’t expect a horror film – it’s an action-packed adventure with plenty of explosions. Also recently released was a TV series called The Institute, a sci-fi story about children with special abilities who are held in a facility and try to break free. Think of it like Stranger Things, but focused on the kids’ powers and escape, without the monster element. While it has some suspenseful moments, it’s not truly terrifying.

It: Welcome To Derry Finally Gives King Fans Scares

The new season of It: Welcome to Derry finally broke a streak of disappointing horror releases with its premiere. The episode immediately establishes a terrifying atmosphere, beginning with young Matty being offered a ride home by a seemingly normal family. The situation quickly turns nightmarish when the mother goes into labor and gives birth to a winged demonic creature that attacks him, proving this HBO Max series is delivering the scares that other Stephen King adaptations have lacked in 2025.

The HBO Max series It: Welcome to Derry is a prequel to the story of It, which was originally a novel by Stephen King and then adapted into two movies released in 2017 and 2019. Fans of It know that the evil creature Pennywise the Clown reappears every 27 years to haunt the town of Derry, Maine. While the original story took place in 1957 and 1984, the recent movies updated the timeline to 1988 and 2016. This series continues the story from those films, with the same director, Andy Muschietti, and actor, Bill Skarsgård, returning as Pennywise.

As a big fan of the It story, I was really excited about It: Welcome to Derry, and it didn’t disappoint! The story takes place in 1962, showing us the last time Pennywise haunted Derry before the events of the main movie. And honestly, if you were worried it wouldn’t be scary, forget about it – it absolutely is! The first episode takes its time setting things up, but that opening scene is genuinely chilling, and the creepy atmosphere builds throughout. It feels like a perfect return to the kind of horror Stephen King does so well, and it’s arriving just when we need a really good scare – breaking up a bit of a lull in truly frightening movies.

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2025-10-30 22:42