Goosebumps: The Movie

[JVM]

And I thought I was hallucinating AGAIN.

Columbia Pictures has acquired from Scholastic Media the right to adapt Scholastic's bestselling "Goosebumps" book series into a theatrical feature. The film will be produced by Deborah Forte and Neal H. Moritz; it was announced today by Doug Belgrad and Matt Tolmach, presidents of Columbia Pictures.

"Goosebumps" is one of the most popular series of books for children ever -- in fact, only the "Harry Potter" novels have surpassed "Goosebumps" in total sales.

"Goosebumps" has been published in over 32 languages and sold more than 300 million copies worldwide. The series was successfully adapted by Scholastic Entertainment for television for the Fox Kids Network, where it was rated #1 for four seasons, and aired in over 100 countries. Episodes of the live action television series returned to the small screen in 2007 on Cartoon Network and instantly became a sensation. New "Goosebumps HorrorLand" books written by R.L. Stine hit the stores last month and, this fall, Scholastic Interactive unveils a highly anticipated "Goosebumps" videogame.

Commenting on the announcement, Tolmach said, "'Goosebumps' is an international multi-media phenomenon, a truly global brand that excites kids everywhere. Children and parents alike love the 'Goosebumps' series -- it's safe, scary fun that is completely accessible to audiences from 8 to 80. When kids think of 'Goosebumps,' they're drawn not to a single character or mini-series, but to an entire environment. We're excited by that creative challenge and, 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."

"I'm looking forward to bringing 'Goosebumps' to the big screen with Columbia and Neal who value and respect the brand and the global fan base that Scholastic has cultivated. What better way to deliver the rollercoaster ride of scares and humor that the fans expect from 'Goosebumps' than with a movie. Sony's track record with franchises like 'Spider-Man' makes them an ideal partner," said Deborah Forte, producer and president of Scholastic Media

"Securing the motion picture rights to 'Goosebumps' for Columbia Pictures and Sony comes with an enormous responsibility to the fans who have grown up with these books and have very high expectations about how these beloved novels will be adapted. We are truly delighted to be partners with Deborah Forte and the team at Scholastic as we work together to bring 'Goosebumps' to the big screen," said Moritz.

The "Goosebumps" book series returned to the top of the sales charts again last month with the release of the first two books in "Goosebumps HorrorLand," a new twelve book series by R.L. Stine, featuring favorite characters from the original series such as Slappy the Dummy, the Haunted Mask, and the Mummy. It is the first "Goosebumps" serialized adventure in which each book is part of the same plot. Fans can also get exclusive "Goosebumps HorrorLand" content at EnterHorrorLand.com; and additional "Goosebumps" chills at the official "Goosebumps" website, which continues to garner 1.5 million page views each month.

The studio will begin developing the first Goosebumps movie immediately. Andrea Giannetti will oversee the project on behalf of the studio working closely with Original Films and Scholastic.



I don't know whether I should be pissed they could butcher it, or happy that this could put Goosebumps back on top.

[Jigsaw]

I hope they do this right. I loved the Goosebumps books as a kid and even enjoyed a few episodes of the cheesy television show.

[Scarecrow]

Fun little books, but they were no Point Horror. :p


- Scarecrow

[Psychoticninja]

I'm interested who the target audience is going to be. Is it going to be like a Disney movie or they're actually going to spook it up a bit... because i mean Goosebumps is a children's book and the tv show was a good judge as to how a movie would go. I dunno what to think.. i need to get more info first

[Joshg]

I think they'll aim it at 20 year olds. Afterall, they grew up with the books, so they'll love a gory movie. :D

[The Dream Master]

So, is this going to be an anthology movie that adapts a few of the stories? That'd be cool. We don't get too many anthology horror flicks these days.

[God of Thunder]

FUCK YEAH! FINALLY! I LOVE Goosebumps. I remember it pissed me off when they stopped playing the show. This is gonna kick ass!

[El Rooto]

And I thought I was hallucinating AGAIN. I must confess, I had the same reaction when I saw this thread.

[Jigsaw]

I wonder if the anthology movie might be darker and edgier than the show or even the books?

[Psychoticninja]

If its darkier and edgier, then by all means MAKE IT! Because alot of the Goosebumps books can be scary, if they just make it a little more darker, u know. As a kid some of them were a little scary, but i can definitely see some of those stories being done right.

And I was also wondering if the movie would be one movie, or a couple of stories

[Jigsaw]

I'd love to see Goosebumps stories more accurately adapted from the books and made much darker, maybe even pushing the limits with it's content. The only episodes of the show that were superior to the books IMO were Stay Out Of The Basement, Welcome To Camp Nightmare and The Werewolf Of Fever Swamp (the latter of whom is my favorite of both the books and the show).

[nottidelterrore]

Say cheese & die!

[Jigsaw]

My favorite Goosebumps books:


The Werewolf Of Fever Swamp
Welcome To Camp Nightmare
Stay Out Of The Basement
Monster Blood saga
Night Of The Living Dummy saga
The Beast From The East
Say Cheese And Die!
A Night In Terror Tower
Attack Of The Mutant
The Haunted Mask 1 & 2
The Abominable Snowman Of Pasadena
Creature Teacher
Invasion Of The Body Squeezers
Fright Camp
One Day In Horrorland
Revenge Of The Lawn Gnomes
Beware, The Snowman


Probably a lot of others, too.

[CanadianFonzie]

this may be cool, I never liked the show...or atleast I never got into it, but every Goosbumps book I read I enjoyed

[Jigsaw]

I think the show's first couple of seasons were decent, but after that it just got silly and cheap, IMO. Some of the episodes were very good, and a few were even superior to the books, such as WOFS and WTCN. The only episode I haven't seen is Welcome To Dead House.

[DRE]

Next they can make a scarier version of "Are You Afraid of the Dark."

[CanadianFonzie]

I did actually see a few episodes of Goosebumps that I quite enjoyed

a scarier Are You Afraid Of The Dark would be cool...but I don't know if I'd prefer it over the classic show

[DRE]

Nothing could top the original show. Tales From The Darkside: The Movie didn't even do that, although it was great in its own right. We do need more anthology films, like the good old days.

[Jigsaw]

Some AYOTD episodes are very scary for a kids' show. I remember The Tale Of The Night Shift scared me pretty bad and made my Mom turn it off. My all-time favorite AYOTD episode is The Dead Man's Float.

[JVM]

I'll be honest, I don't think they can do it right as an anthology movie. A lot of the more popular books are those with more complicated plotlines - Welcome to Dead House and Night of the Living Dummy could probably be adapted into films in their own right.

Another possibility is that they are going to combine different books into singular events. Per example, a movie based on both Haunted Mask books, or all 4 Monster Bloods.

I think they shouldn't make it too much darker, because if they turn Slappy into a slasher, it would be cool and fun but all fandoms have those real hardcore fans who get pissed at every little deviation.

According to Wikipedia, they're looking for a writer. I'm guessing it's true, as I haven't seen any vandalism to a Goosebumps page prior, except someone saying Slappy raped the girls at the end of Dummy 2.

There's actually a Goosebumps wikia too. Goosebumps.wikia.com

[SlasherFreak]

I wish they would make some films out of R.L Stines old teen novels, especially a few from the Fear Street series...man, them things got me into reading when I was young...

[HalloweenHorror]

I'm not really sure what to think or expect of this. Goosebumps was my life for a few years, I collected over 30 of the original 64(?) series. I read all of the original series. Huge fan of Goosebumps and I don't want to see it ruined. I would definitely be anxious througout the wait, however.

Some of my favorites:
Curse of Camp Cold Lake (my favorite, and to me, most easy to read)
Say Cheese & Die
Say Cheese & Die Again
Phantom of the Auditorium
Vampire Breath
The Ghost Next Door
One Day At Horrorland
Welcome to Camp Jellyjam
Ghost Camp
Attack of the Mutant

I could literally sit here and name them all, I loved the books!

Interesting.

[God of Thunder]

The covers for Welcome to Camp Nightmare, It Came From Beneath the Sink, Stay Out of the Basement, and The Haunted Mask, and that one with the evil scarecrow used to scare me, along with Night at Terror Tower. I had puzzles for the scarecrow one and Welcome to Camp Nightmare.

[nickmeece]

As long as they incorporate "The Haunted Mask 1 and 2" and "The Scarecrow Walks at Midnight," I'll be happy...and maybe throw in "Stay Out of The Basement pt 1" and "Welcome to Hell House."

Hell, maybe this will get Nickelodeon to sell the rights to Are You Afraid of the Dark to Lionsgate and they'll adapt "The Tale of Laughing in the Dark" into an r-rated feature! Yes, I'm dreaming...

[Jigsaw]

Some of the Goosebumps books that had multiple sequels could even become their own series, like Monster Blood and Night Of The Living Dummy. My favorite MB is hard to choose between Monster Blood II or IV, while my favorite NOTLD was probably the original.

[El Rooto]

Monster Blood and Night Of The Living Dummy. If there are two of the books I remember well, it's those.

[Jigsaw]

I loved all the MB books and the first three NOTLD books, although Bride OTLD and Slappy's Nightmare weren't horrible.

[Scarecrow]

It seems a bit of a weird one, I mean, who WILL be the audience? They're kids books so really it should be a younger aged gorup. Maybe Monster House style?

- Scarecrow

[nickmeece]

This is one instance where I will accept a PG-13 horror movie.

[JVM]

What I think they should do is adapt the more successful books - Night of the Living Dummy, Monster Blood, The Haunted Mask - into films, mixing new material and old material - but not axing any old material. If these are successful keep doing it until you're down to those last few ones nobody likes. Adapt em anyway for completion.

FYI, there were 62 books in the original series, 24 or 25 in the "2000" series, 12 in the In-Progress HorrorLand series, and I don't even remember how many in the "Give Yourself Goosebumps" stories. Those weren't Goosebumps. Fun books but not Goosebumps books.

[Jigsaw]

I enjoyed some of the GYGB books. I think Secret Agent Grandma was my favorite of the ones that I read.

[JVM]

I really think the theory about the GYG being ghostwritten is true. I've read 5 of them and none seemed like Stine's style at all. The only ones I remember well are Batwing Hall and the Babysitter one.

[Jigsaw]

I remember back in the day how there was a new GB book every month. Doing that kind of writing must've been exausting for Stine back then. I remember 1995 was the year Goosebumps probably peaked with it's popularity, with the TV show's premiere and the books rapidly gaining more popularity. The popularity dwindled somewhat in 1998 when the Goosebumps 2000 series and the cancellation of the show, which by then became very cheesy and cheap.

[JVM]

They're releasing new ones right now too. Goosebumps HorrorLand. Haven't seen any yet. I'll pick up RotLD soon.

[MiMania]

I remember back in the day how there was a new GB book every month. Doing that kind of writing must've been exausting for Stine back then. I remember 1995 was the year Goosebumps probably peaked with it's popularity, with the TV show's premiere and the books rapidly gaining more popularity. The popularity dwindled somewhat in 1998 when the Goosebumps 2000 series and the cancellation of the show, which by then became very cheesy and cheap.

tbh, the TV series was pretty cheesy and cheap from the get-go. but it was entertaining cheese, at least.

I used to have all of the books, but I don't think I have any now. same for Animorphs (which, truthfully, I thought was much better as a book and television series).

[Jigsaw]

The show was sort of cheesy at the start but it had far better quality and production than it did in it's last two seasons, IMO. Some of the episodes in the latter seasons were downright terrible, like the adaption of A Shocker On Shock Street. I wouldn't mind if the show got remade with the adaptations truer to the books and darker in tone and approach. Maybe the anthology film will be a series of such adaptions.

[JVM]

If they make a new TV series, they should make it an hour long. There's so few hour shows that aren't intended to be mini-series or pure, pure action. Add in that probably 1/3 of the episodes were two-parters.

[Jigsaw]

I agree. I also think if this show were to be aired on a cable network like HBO or Showtime, they could get away with a lot more edgy content. While the books have never been particularly edgy, some of the earlier ones were a lot darker in tone and approach than most of the later books.

[Lance Lives]

My favorite was always Attack of the Mutant but Monster Blood 1 and 2 and Night of the Living Dummy were close follow ups. This seems like a good idea I guess, but I really don't see how it could be done without being an anthology, unless they really had to change the content of a few of the books to get them to be happening as one story or something?

[Scarecrow]

A decent anthology movie would be cool to see again!

- Scarecrow

[El Rooto]

I was just thinking about the show the other day, and how extremely uneven it was.

[Jigsaw]

The show was pretty decent in it's first two seasons, but after that it got very cheap and cheesy, and not in a good way.

[Just Jeans]

The books are a lot better than the TV series, by a long chalk. Definitely horror for kids, but no bad thing.

[Jigsaw]

IMO, the only episodes of the show superior to the books were The Werewolf Of Fever Swamp, Welcome To Camp Nightmare, Stay Out Of The Basement, A Night In Terror Tower, and possibly Monster Blood and both Haunted Masks. All of these books were excellent as well, enjoyable for what they were. The vast majority of the books though were indeed largely superior to the episodes, especially A Shocker On Shock Street :X

[JVM]

I'll be honest, I haven't read any of my GB books in a long time, mostly because I've read all of the ones I have, my library's crammed with the 'newer' ones from the later 1990s. I feel in the 50s the books started to go really downhill. The 40s were good books, but a lot of them didn't even give a slight creepy feeling.

[Jigsaw]

The books definitely declined in quality majorly with Series 2000, which IMO only had a few really good ones. The old-school ones from the beginning to the mid-40s or so were great reads.

[CanadianFonzie]

a question that has just recently puzzled me, how might this movie go? will it be just one epic Goosebumps story? will it be a completely original script? I mean how can you make a movie from a tv show that was based on childrens novels, I mean I liked how the show brought the books to life

[JVM]

My best bet is they'll either invent some kind of frame story and present 2-3 stories in a flashback kind of format. That, or they'll adapt one of the books and extend it. The television series proved that some of the books did contain over an hour's worth of material, but many books did fine in the half-hour slots.

And yeah, Series 2000 was really bad. It seems to me almost as if Goosebumps went bad at it's peak of populartiy. I'd say the last good book was 'Attack of the Jack-O'-Lanterns', although I also liked 'Monster Blood IV' and 'Vampire Breath', they just didn't feel, well, Goosebumps.

[Just Jeans]

They could compress multi-book storylines into a single plot. Perhaps the Monster Blood books, or the Night of the Living Dummy books.

I'd like to see the two Horrorland books done into a film.

[CanadianFonzie]

I thought (and worried) that they might just put more than one story in the movie, if they manage to combine them, however they might do that, I guess that would be fine if they could make it work

[Just Jeans]

How many Monster Blood books are there? Four? They could probably take the lot and come up with a cohesive story.

[God of Thunder]

The books definitely declined in quality majorly with Series 2000, which IMO only had a few really good ones. The old-school ones from the beginning to the mid-40s or so were great reads.

I'll agree, a lot of those Series 2000 books sucked, but I always liked Creature Teacher. I thought that was a pretty cool story.

Anyone read those Give Yourself Goosebumps books? Those were pretty sweet.

[JVM]

I would ignore 4. It was much too different and weird. 2 and 3 could possible combined since 2 takes place mostly at school, or so. 1 took place months before though, and in order to setup 2 and 3, you have to keep those months.

The Dummy books can't really be combined. They all kind of do their own thing.

Deep Trouble could be combined, me thinks.

The Haunted Mask would probably do best taking place at two different times.

[Rich]

Why make a Goosebumps movie now? That stuff was popular like 15 years ago. The time to make that movie would have been the mid-90s.

[Jigsaw]

Anyone read those Give Yourself Goosebumps books? Those were pretty sweet.


I remember those, a lot of those were really cool.

[Just Jeans]

Why make a Goosebumps movie now? That stuff was popular like 15 years ago. The time to make that movie would have been the mid-90s.

Why make a Watchmen film now? The time to make a movie would have been the early-90s.

Classic stuff -- and Goosebumps is classic in its own right -- has a way of rearing its head years later.