Max (known by at least some subscribers simply as HBO Max) offers up a spine-chilling headliner this week with Welcome to Derry, the prequel series to the blockbuster It movies. It’s accompanied by the rural-healthcare documentary Country Doctor and A24 Sundance drama Sorry, Baby, one of the service’s all-time most eclectic single-week drops.
Welcome to Derry Leads This Week’s New Max Releases
Positioned in the year 1962, Welcome to Derry turns back the clock on Stephen King mythology to a point 27 years before the present day of the modern films — right in time for Pennywise’s return as messianic cyclical terror. Andy Muschietti, who directed both It and It Chapter Two, serves as the series’ shepherd, and Bill Skarsgård returns to the career-defining role of the title terror across a nine-episode arc.
The setup is that of the Hanlon family’s move to town around the time children start going missing, a decision that bolsters the lore while keeping attention squarely on a new crop of kids charged with facing off with an age-old predator.
Look forward to tightly wound set pieces, period Americana with a rot underneath, and a cast that features Taylour Paige, Jovan Adepo, and James Remar. Since the two It movies grossed more than $1 billion globally, according to Box Office Mojo, Warner Bros. Television is obviously taking a bet on long-tail horror demand turning into a long-form story being watched on Max.
For horror fans, October has long seen its streaming options spike — Nielsen’s The Gauge has recorded frequent surges of the genre each fall, for example — so Max’s timing and TV-MA rating seem calculated to ride that trend by giving subscribers a marquee reason to stick around week to week.
Doc Spotlight: Country Doctor Examines Rural Care
A critique of the rural-care crisis in America, with Oklahoma-based physician James Graham at its heart as he tries to keep an obsolete hospital in Fairfax from going under. Directed by Emmy-winning documentarians Shari Cookson and Nick Doob, the film combines an intimate character study with a policy gut-check: What does it look like when the only ER for miles around is dying?
Context matters here. The Chartis Center for Rural Health has cautioned that more than 600 rural hospitals are in danger of shutting down, and the Sheps Center at UNC has documented a steady drumbeat of closures since 2010. Country Doctor strains those statistics through quotidian realities — staffing shortfalls, reimbursement pressures, and community triage — so that its TV-MA label is less a matter of shock value than the lack of sugarcoating in representing stakes that are, quite literally, life and death.
Indie Highlight: Sorry, Baby Brings Sundance Buzz
Eva Victor writes, directs, and stars in Sorry, Baby, an A24-supported drama that came to Sundance with high festival buzz. Victor stars as the literature professor Agnes, at a small New England college, whose assault by a colleague sets off a complicated personal and institutional reckoning. The film’s R rating is commensurate with its content: frank, disturbing, and unwilling to smooth over nuance for easy answers.
With a cast that features Louis Cancelmi, Naomi Ackie, and others, the film’s early audience scores — it has 7.1/10 from IMDb users — indicate it has appeal beyond just festival hounds.
A24 has earned a name for itself with its smart, conversation-sparking dramas; slotting Sorry, Baby into Max’s rotation opens up the week’s tone from doom to deliberation; an option there for everyone who’s not running after clowns through rain gutters.
Also New on Max This Week: Series, Docs and More
Anchoring the slate are new seasons of Lakeside Retreats and Teen Titans Go!, survival fare with Naked and Afraid Brazil XL, true-crime storytelling in American Monster, nature peril in Survival of the Beast, and engineering deep dives through Fatal Engineering. Also added to the lineup is CNN’s long-form special The United States vs. Harvard: The Whole Story with Anderson Cooper, which should inject a timely nonfiction angle on the evening.
Why This Max Lineup Matters for Subscribers Now
Max has fallen back on a big-tent strategy — prestige HBO originals, Discovery unscripted, and theatrical partners like A24 — to control churn. A horror tentpole like Welcome to Derry requires appointment viewing, Country Doctor slots in additional social policy relevance of the type that’s part and parcel of HBO’s documentary tradition, while Sorry, Baby offers one-stop shopping for the art-house audience. For a platform fighting for attention against sports-heavy bundles and buzzy originals elsewhere, this week’s stew feels calculated and, more important, enticing.
If you’re prioritizing, go for Derry for the cultural moment, slot Country Doctor in for a necessary reality check, and cue up Sorry, Baby when you have a day to park your butt in something thorny. It’s a rare week when the algorithm isn’t best answered by “all of the above.”