Disney’s Goosebumps reboot looks a lot like the recent Goosebumps live-action movies, raising the question of whether these two incarnations of the franchise are related. Goosebumps began life in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s as a series of children’s horror novels from RL Stine. This bestselling series soon spawned a TV adaptation that served as a launching ground for future stars like Ryan Gosling. Decades later, Goosebumps was revived as two horror-comedy movies, both self-aware efforts that saw Jack Black play a fictionalized version of Stine whose manuscripts were used to keep the monsters from his brain contained within their pages.
Now, Disney’s 2023 Goosbeumps reboot offers another take on the franchise only five years after Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween ended Black’s reign in the role of Stine. However, Goosebumps 2023 isn’t the first Stine project to arrive on streaming services since Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween. 2021 saw the arrival of Netflix’s Fear Street trilogy, a trio of interconnected horror movies that adapted books from Stine’s YA series of the same name. Unlike every screen version of Goosebumps, the Fear Street movies were firmly R-rated and thus intended for an older audience than the author’s usual family-friendly horror-comedy output.
The New Goosebumps Show Is Not Connected To The Movies
Disney’s 2023 Goosebumps show is not canonically linked to the live-action movies of the 2010s. However, the two projects do share some creative blood. Although viewers should not expect to see Jack Black’s Goosebumps character RL Stine appearing in the Disney show, 2023’s Goosebumps reboot was developed by Rob Letterman and the producer also directed the show’s pilot episode. Letterman previously directed 2015’s Goosebumps movie and the 2023 reboot has a similar tone to that earlier effort. However, 2023’s
Goosebumps reboot is aimed at a slightly older audience and is a little less outwardly comedic than the live-action movies.
While Letterman did direct 2015’s Goosebumps, the show was also developed by Nicholas Stoller. Between them, the two creatives came up with a slightly darker take on the source material than either the cheesy ‘90s series or the comedy-forward live-action movies offered viewers. One thing that the Goosebumps reboot learned from Fear Street is that character drama can be as compelling as monster-centric chaos. While 2023’s Goosebumps reboot promises plenty of the latter, the show’s trailer promises a more grounded tone than the movies in the series by focusing on establishing its central group of teen heroes and their relationships.
How 2023’s Goosebumps Show Is Different Than The Original Show
While 2023’s Goosebumps reboot is less openly comedic than the franchise’s live-action movies, the show also differs from the ‘90s series of the same name. For one thing, its main characters are significantly older. The heroes of 2023’s reboot are in high school where most of the ‘90s show’s main characters were in middle school or younger. Furthermore, where the ‘90s Goosebumps show was a series of anthology stories, 2023’s Goosebumps reboot has a serialized multi-episode story. Although 2023’s Goosebumps does adapt classic novels from the series, the show has a season-long arc that separates it from the ‘90s show and lighter live-action Goosebumps movies.
