Story details for the live-action Disney+ Goosebumps series have been revealed, providing insight into the upcoming TV adaptation. Initially created as a 62-book series by author R.L. Stine, the children’s horror novels quickly gained a solid following and today the series and its spinoffs span over 200 books, with over 400 million copies in print. This tremendous popularity has made it the second best-selling book series in history, just behind the phenomenal success of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series.
Yet despite the immense number of Goosebumps books and the number of copies sold, it might be hard for some to believe just how popular the series is. By comparison, the Harry Potter series is instantly recognizable around the world, even to those who have never opened so much as one of its seven books. Goosebumps, on the other hand, boasts 62 books in its initial series alone and barely receives a fraction of the mainstream attention that Potter has enjoyed. What’s more, the horror series has previously enjoyed live-action adaptations, with the first being a TV series based around specific Goosebumps books. While successful enough to be the number one rated children’s television program for three straight years in the United States, it only ran for four seasons, from 1995-1998. Beyond that, fans of the books had to wait until 2015 to see an adaption. This time it was set for the big screen, with a sequel arriving in 2018. The films received middling responses from audiences and critics.
At long last, Goosebumps is set to return to television screens in an attempt at giving the lucrative children’s horror franchise some fresh traction. It’s been common knowledge for fans by this point that a series is in the works at Disney+, but now thanks to some new information from Deadline, insight into what sort of storyline the series will follow has been released. From the sounds of it, the new TV series will eschew the previous model of adapting specific novels into episodes and instead take a direction that’s more familiar to those who saw the two most recent film adaptations:
Written by Nick Stoller and Rob Letterman, Goosebumps combines teen comedy with horror, action-adventure, mystery and psychological thrill. The series follows a group of five high schoolers who unleash supernatural forces upon their town and must all work together — thanks to and in spite of their friendships, rivalries and pasts with each other — in order to save it, learning much about their own parents’ teenage secrets in the process.
Letterman directed the first Goosebumps big-screen adaptation, so fans of that film can take some comfort in knowing that he’s already got experience in building the sort of world that the series appears to be going for. He’ll also be directing the first episode. And although the two Goosebumps films didn’t exactly reach any sort of blockbuster status, the formula that they offered could likely work better as a TV series. At present there’s still no official release date for the series, which is undoubtedly frustrating many, seeing as how the TV adaptation was first announced back in April 2020.
It’s arguable that the only reason the first Goosebumps film found any sort of success was due to a cast that included Jack Black and Dylan Minnette. The two were noticeably absent in Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween, eliminating any real chance that the franchise had to build itself up to that next level of popularity. Hopefully, the arrival of a Disney+ TV series will be able to pick up the pieces and create something that could later expand into a new attempt at a film franchise. For now, at least, fans can rest assured that the series is still happening, though its apparent similarity to the films might not be to everyone’s liking.
