Tim Curry's Pennywise just put a 36-year-old miniseries back in the HBO Max top 10

If you’re keeping tabs on horror icons doing the rounds online, you may have spotted an old favourite crawling back into the limelight: It, the 1990 miniseries responsible for a whole generation’s clown phobia, has just muscled its way up the HBO Max charts again—a full 36 years after it first aired. The culprit behind this resurgence? None other than the late, truly unmatched Tim Curry, whose performance as Pennywise still sets the bar for evil clowns everywhere.

‘It’ climbed into HBO Max’s Top 10 most-watched titles, landing at number 8 following Tim Curry’s death.

The original Pennywise still bites

Let’s be honest, there’s been no shortage of Stephen King adaptations since the Eighties, and not all have aged gracefully. But It has stuck around for a reason. Curry’s Pennywise wasn’t just a villain with bad makeup and a penchant for sewer banter—he was a genuine nightmare, the kind that made you eye birthday parties with suspicion well into adulthood. Even now, after all of Hollywood’s CGI monsters and big-budget remakes, Curry’s version tops most lists of truly unsettling baddies, right up there with Hannibal Lecter and Darth Vader. Add in the fact that this role followed his turn as Dr Frank-N-Furter in The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and you get a sense of the sheer range and ambition at work.

In case you’ve somehow blanked on the plot: the story jumps between two timelines in Derry, Maine—kids face off against a supernatural entity that eats children every 27 years, then reunite as adults when the thing inevitably pops back up. Pennywise is the entity’s favourite form, and the miniseries leans hard into that. Part 1 largely focuses on the kids and keeps the clown’s appearances teasingly mysterious; Part 2 is where the adult traumas and backstory start pouring out, not always for the better, though that’s often the way with two-parters.

The cast, the crew, the behind-the-scenes weirdness

Aside from Curry, it’s a bit of a murderers’ row of Nineties TV faces: John Ritter, Seth Green, Jonathan Brandis, Richard Thomas, Annette O'Toole, Richard Masur, and several more. The whole affair was directed by Tommy Lee Wallace (yes, the same bloke behind Halloween 3: Season of the Witch), who wrote the script with Lawrence D. Cohen—the chap who also adapted Carrie for the big screen.

Now, here’s a tidbit horror nerds will appreciate: the original director attached was George A. Romero of Night of the Living Dead fame, who had a good working relationship with King after the monster anthology Creepshow. He didn’t stay on, and King himself barely got involved, so you do have to wonder what sort of unhinged, low-budget masterpiece we might have got if Romero had called the shots. Still, what we got has stood the test of time pretty well.

• It aired on 18 November, 1990 – in a two-night event that nabbed 30 million viewers on ABC.
• Pulled together as a single 188-minute feature for streaming (hence HBO Max calling it a ‘movie’ instead of a miniseries).
• A 70% Rotten Tomatoes score keeps the critics mostly happy, at least for Part 1.
• The new generation films (2017 and 2019) keep splitting fans, but the original’s first half still reigns for many.

With Curry’s passing fresh in the news, it’s no shock people are seeking out the original for another go – and clearly plenty of us still prefer our evil clowns with a side of Nineties TV weirdness, shonky effects and all.