Of all the monsters conjured up by Master of Horror Stephen King, Pennywise the Dancing Clown is easily the most iconic — and the most terrifying. An eldritch extraterrestrial that surfaces every 27 years to feast on the children of Derry, Maine, 'It' has haunted our dreams across King's original book, a Tim Curry led miniseries, and — in the shape of Bill Skarsgård — Andy Muschietti's IT duology. Now, in IT: Welcome To Derry, a prequel to Muschietti's two films, HBO Max is turning the clock back to 27 years before The Loser Club's first run-in with the killer clown to dig deeper into the origins of Pennywise and his reign of terror. Check out the creepy first trailer below:

"Anywhere but Derry." Missing children. Ignorant adults. A new band of kids on bikes. Faces smiling creepily at windows. And... there he is, Skarsgård's cosmic harlequin of horror, hanging out and mining aura in the sewers of Maine. Yeah, we're thinking Pennywise is back! Only this time, it's 1962, and — per Muschietti's movies' timeline — we're in the year It awakens after the burning down of The Black Spot, an African-American catering nightclub that in the books is the target of white nationalists. How the climate of the era plays directly into this new chapter in Derry and It's history is largely left untouched in this first trailer for Brad Caleb Kane and Jason Fuchs' show, which instead focuses on establishing the early 60s vibe, teasing the new spate of mortifying child disappearances, and introducing the series' new cast of as-yet-unnamed protagonists — including Taylour Paige, Jovan Adepo, Chris Chalk, James Remar, Stephen Rider, Madeleine Stowe and Rudy Mancuso.