Columbia to give us GOOSEBUMPS!

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Posted by Matt Holmes. Last modified on May 15th, 2008 at 06:59am

I went through a phase in my first real introduction to reading where I devoured every Goosebumps book I could find and although R.L. Stine was quick to write more - often he couldn’t keep up with my hunger and quick pace for needing more stories. That eventually led me elsewhere to much bigger and better things but for a good number of years, Goosebumps were my number 1 form of entertainment.

I still have many of them lying around somewhere. My favourites were Night of the Living Dummy (an obvious adaptation of a great Twilight Zone episode starring Cliff Robertson), Attack of the Mutants (a superhero yarn which could make a great movie actually), Welcome to Horrorland (which was awesome) and a story about a scarecrow whose name alludes me right now.

Each novel was like a mixture between a Stephen King book and as I’ve said The Twilight Zone - where twist endings were common and not only was a bad ending possible, sometimes it was inevitable. They were great moral stories for kids - and pretty scary too when your 8-11. And a great way to be introduced to horror!

The news today from Variety is that Colombia have bought the rights to the whole series from it’s author R.L. Stine and for the first time his $300 million sellers will be coming to the big screen - only Harry Potter can claim more sales in children’s books. Although you have to remember there is about a gazillion books in the Goosebumps series so each individual book doesn’t necessarily need to sell millions.

Scholastic’s Deborah Forte is producing alongside Neal Moritz via his Sony-based Original Film banner.

Studio are now fast-tracking the project and are on the hunt out for a writer. The plan is to go with unknown child actors for the main parts and then flesh out the features with some well known actors. It’s not yet known if the books will follow a pattern and the same core group of characters from film to film.

Fans of the books (like me) will remember the live action t.v. show that aired on Fox Kids in the 90’s… some of which were pretty darn terrible if I’m honest. Bigger production values and bigger scope should lead to better things.

Damn, I’m excited.

Categories: Goosebumps, New Project, R.L. Stine

10 Comments »

Wasn’t the TV series terrible enough?

Comment by Michael Kaminski | May 15, 2008

Were Goosebumps the books were you could choose what happened or which path to take? I can’t remember - but either way, this is quite cool news as I actually enjoyed the TV show as a kid. That said, I’m sure if I watched them now it would be a different story.

Comment by Peter Willis | May 15, 2008

You didn;t get to choose the way they turned out, but that said I can;t remember them much apart from that I didn’t many because they scared my younger self to bits.

Thinking about it, I’m surprised that they haven’t already tried to make R.L. Stine’;s works into movies already. This cpould be pretty cool…

Comment by James Clayton | May 15, 2008

Mmm Matt will know what I’m on about - there was definitley a series of books, similar to Goosebumps, that offered readers choices as they went through. Turn to page X if you want to do Y, that kinda thing.

Comment by Peter Willis | May 15, 2008

Do you mean Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson’s Fighting Fantasy books? They were so cool! You couldn’t make a movie out of those; the whole point was that the readers decided which way te story went…

Damn. I want to re-read all these books now…

Comment by James Clayton | May 15, 2008

You could certainly make a straight to DVD movie for them…

Comment by Peter Willis | May 15, 2008

Nah Peter is right, Goosebumps eventually brought out a spin-off series called Goosebumps: Choose Your Own Adventures.

They were pretty cool, though impossible to get through the whole novel without being killed off around 100 times.

Comment by Matt Holmes | May 15, 2008

This could end up being pretty cool. My little brother’s friend borrowed a VHS from the library once and the episode was pretty bad. I remember not liking that episode as a kid anyway.

I can see this working out.

Comment by Lencho | May 15, 2008

they can do “the nightmare room” to.

Comment by layzieone | May 15, 2008

[...] project was first announced in May but we still don’t know precisely how they plan to tackle the over 50 R.L. Stine written [...]

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