Goosebumps, a series inspired by R.L. Stine’s book franchise, premieres on Disney Plus and Hulu Friday, October 13. There are 10 episodes and five drop on premiere day.
A Goosebumps series aired in Canada for four seasons in the late ‘90s, and there were a couple Goosebumps movies too.
Stine’s books featured middle-school students, and the new series ages the kids up to high school. The aim was “to make it be a little more sophisticated,” said Conor Welch, executive producer. “We wanted to make it so that 40-year-olds like myself could watch with our children, and separate from our children as well.”
Making the most of Disney’s reach, the first two episodes air on Freeform October 13 as part of its “31 Nights of Halloween” event.
The Canadian series had an anthology nature, with each episode wrapping up at the end, and a new storyline and new characters in the next episode. The new series is different, with season-long plots. It features five high school students as they investigate the death of a local teen named Harold three decades before, and see how their parents might have played a role in Harold’s mysterious life and death.
The show taps elements from five Stine books: Say Cheese and Die!, The Haunted Mask, The Cuckoo Clock of Doom, Go Eat Worms! and Night of the Living Dummy.
The cast includes Justin Long, Rachael Harris, Zack Morris, Isa Briones and Miles McKenna.
Exec producer Pavun Shetty said the producers aimed to mix humor in with the scary stuff, and real-life drama to boot. “Five high-school kids face real high-school issues that kids face, and their parents face real issues that parents face,” he said. “A lot of times those issues are messy and awkward and absurd and frightening.”
Nicholas Stoller and Rob Letterman developed the series and exec produce with Shetty, Welch, Hilary Winston, Neal H. Moritz, Scholastic Entertainment’s Iole Lucchese and Caitlin Friedman, Erin O’Malley and Kevin Murphy.
The show shoots in Vancouver and is set in a fictional Pacific Northwest town. Welch called it “a beautiful, idyllic backdrop to set scary things on top of.”
Published by Scholastic, there are more than 400 million Goosebumps books in print. Stine authored 62 of them.
Stine is involved in the series, but does not have an official title. “We didn’t do anything without his blessing,” said Shetty.
Welch said his daughters consume the Goosebumps books greedily, just as he did as a kid. “As someone who grew up reading his books as a young tween, it’s incredible to be able to have anything to do with R.L. Stine,” he said. “To have him involved is really awesome.”
