Stephen King Says There’s One Book He Won’t Write a Sequel for

While HBO’s series, IT: Welcome to Derry may have audiences hungry for more Pennywise, don’t expect further storylines to come courtesy author Stephen King.

Answering fan questions in a 2013 Reddit Ask Me Anything interview, King, now 78, said of writing an IT sequel: “I don’t think I could bear to deal with Pennywise again. Too scary, even for me.”

King’s 1986 horror novel told the story of seven children terrorized by an evil entity called It, which exploits its victims using their own fears.

It’s been adapted into a 1990 television miniseries (in which Tim Curry memorably portrayed the killer clown) and a more recent film and television series telling the story of a group of neighborhood kids who rise up to fight against Pennywise (Bill Skarsgård),

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The 2017 film adaptation of the book became the highest-grossing horror film of all time, per Variety, and a follow up film — IT Chapter Two — debuted in 2019.

An HBO television series, IT: Welcome to Derry, serves as the prequel to the beloved It movies and is set 27 years before the first film.

Season 1 of the series, which explores the origins of Pennywise, ended on Dec. 14.

In his 2025 memoir, Vagabond, Curry confirmed reports that he had a fear of clowns when he took the role of the first adaptation, saying “Not quite to the extent that I literally couldn’t look at myself in the mirror, as has often been reported, but I certainly didn’t delight in my reflection.”

“In any case, the thought of embodying this killer clown made me feel simultaneously uncomfortable and like I would be pushing myself to take it on. So, with much uncertainty, the type of which confirmed I was still attempting to embrace my contradictions, I replied: ‘Yes, I’m interested,'” he wrote.