Columbia Pictures has acquired rights from Scholastic Media to bring R.L. Stine's young-adult GOOSEBUMPS series to the bigscreen. "Goosebumps" has never been adapted for the bigscreen, despite selling 300 million books -- a young-adult feat second only to Scholastic's "Harry Potter" series. You can read the details inside.
Scholastic's Deborah Forte is producing alongside Neal Moritz via his Sony-based Original Film banner. "Numerous people have tried to bring 'Goosebumps' to the bigscreen, but luckily Scholastic never found the right fit," said Moritz, who is better known for producing action fare such as "The Fast and the Furious" films, though he has the young-adult project "Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day" in development at Sony. "I've been a huge fan of the property for a long time. I met with Deborah several times and convinced her that Original and Sony were the best place to take it."
Sony and Scholastic see the property as a potential franchise.
"The time is ripe for doing a movie," said Forte, who dubbed "Goosebumps" the original "safe scare" property. "The first generation of 'Goosebumps' fans are in their early 20s now."
Studio is fast-tracking the project and is focusing on finding a writer.
Moritz said they likely will cast unknown child actors and then pepper the film with well-known thesps in supporting roles, much like Warner did with the "Harry Potter" franchise.
First published in 1992, the original "Goosebumps" series comprises more than 50 books and has been published in 32 languages. Stine's "Goosebumps HorrorLand" books -- a new 12-book series that feature characters from the original series such as Slappy the Dummy, the Haunted Mask and the Mummy -- hit shelves last month. In the fall, Scholastic Interactive will launch a "Goosebumps" videogame.
The series also spawned a live-action TV show that aired on the Fox Kids Network in the 1990s. Episodes of that series returned to the small screen last year on Cartoon Network.
Matt Tolmach, co-president of Columbia, called the franchise "a truly global brand that excites kids everywhere." He added, "With so much rich source material available to us, we expect to deliver a film that will chill and thrill fans of this unique family-friendly franchise."
Talk about 'to late', I mean christ I read them books back in middle school school. And the show was kinda 'eh'. Are You Afraid of the Dark? was much more scary.
But it is Goosebumps after all. I'll have to see it regardless.
sweet! i remember these as a kid reading all of the books and also the tv show. cool i was wondering if they would ever think about making it to the big screen. hope they make it more scarrier wonder which book theyd do first.
It will happen, and has a good chance at being successful. People aren't thinking about the legions of new fans of the series that develop every year- my six year old son and his friends are nuts for the books. That's why they are constantly in print, and why Stine has the new Horrorland series out.
I can't wait for this, in elementary I had all the books, VHS, and even the sheet set with matching comforter.Now my friends kids have all the books.The movies/books are a great introductory to horror and I think this will do well.
I can see it being successful. If you aren't aware, Goosebumps had a recent run on Cartoon Network(which started last Halloween and it airs now and then on Saturdays before the anime comes on). I can see this being PG-13, but not in the Horror Lite vein. This won't feature adults pretending to be high school students. If anything, the cast will be around 12-years old, which isn't a bad thing. Teenagers are pretty overrated, y'know?
Haha nice!
I still enjoy watching the old episodes. I mean, the stories are nice cheesy ones haha. And i agree with a comment above, this is a great way to introduce horror to younger viewers.
Ahhh the memories....
Strange... I dug out all my old Goosebump books the other day, the first one I acquired being in 1995 at the tender age of seven. I loved the books then, cherish them now, and loved the TV show. A movie will surely be great in the right hands - but will it be a brand new original script? Or a feature-length novel adaptation?
Anyways, great news!
Comments Page 1 of 1 | You have to be logged in to comment! If you don't have an account register now for free! Your account allows you to post comments and reviews, upload videos and images, access or our forums, write personal blogs, and maintain your profile.
Scholastic's Deborah Forte is producing alongside Neal Moritz via his Sony-based Original Film banner. "Numerous people have tried to bring 'Goosebumps' to the bigscreen, but luckily Scholastic never found the right fit," said Moritz, who is better known for producing action fare such as "The Fast and the Furious" films, though he has the young-adult project "Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day" in development at Sony. "I've been a huge fan of the property for a long time. I met with Deborah several times and convinced her that Original and Sony were the best place to take it."
Print Story
Send to a Friend
