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Time is weird in Stephen King's fictional town of Derry, Maine. If you make your way out, your memories of its history fade away the further you get, only to come crashing back should you be unfortunate enough to return. And as it turns out, the timeline isn't easy to keep track of even on our side of the fictional story - in fact, according to IT: Welcome to Derry producer Barbara Muschietti, one of the hardest things about making the series was dealing with an eight-month pause in production. 

Muschietti recently spoke to SFX Magazine about the IT prequel series' difficult production, which was halted by the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes of 2023. The producer, who also worked on the two IT films starring Bill Skarsgård and directed by her brother, Andy, said that "90% of three episodes" had been completed before the pause. 

"We suddenly had to work in different seasons," said Muschietti, "This is a summer show, but suddenly it wasn’t a summer show any more. We had to create a different finale with a different climate."

(You heard it here first, folks - IT: Welcome to Derry's finale does not take place in the summer. Spoilers, I guess?)

Another challenge was that the series child actors were growing up as the series' production was stalled. "The kids were growing," the producer tells SFX, "Voices were changing. Schedules of actors suddenly became hellish. So it was a huge challenge for the studio as well."

Before you get any incorrect ideas, though, Muschietti makes sure to clarify - "Listen, I support the writers and the actors [...] But for the people that were in the process of shooting, it was complicated."

So if by the end of IT: Welcome to Derry season 1 you feel that the kids have aged too quickly (or you were really pissed about the finale not happening in the summer), just remember - the studios could've agreed to the pay their artists fairly a lot sooner than eight months after the strike started.

IT: Welcome to Derry airs new episodes every Sunday night on HBO Max.

In the immortal words of Danny Elfman, "Life's no fun without a good scare." Join Popverse's weekly explorations of the best opening moments of horror cinema in The Coldest Open, and then check out:

• The best horror movies of all time, according to horror aficionado Greg Silber
• The most underrated horror movies from the past couple years
• All the new and upcoming horror movies for 2025 and beyond

And much gore. Er, more. Much more.