Children growing up in the 90s are very familiar with the Goosebumps franchise. It started off with books, which were later adapted into a television series and films from Sony Pictures Animation. The franchise is being brought back to life with the help of a reboot series scheduled to release on Disney Plus tomorrow, October 13. Before the big premiere, the series’ Executive Producers Rob Letterman and Nicholas Stoller sat down to chat with Game ZXC about the upcoming show and what fans can expect.
Since the release of R. L. Stine’s first Goosebumps book in July 1992, the franchise gained immense popularity among the young adult audience. Over the years, 235 books have been published in the Goosebumps series and over 400 million copies of the books have been sold. The books were bestsellers in the US, UK, France, and Australia for more than 115 weeks in total. It only made sense to adapt them to create projects for film and television.
With Goosebumps returning to the small screen, this time on a streaming platform, fans can look forward to a spooky storyline that revolves around “a group of five high schoolers who unleash supernatural forces upon their town.” Apart from being the executive producers on the series, both Letterman and Stoller have taken on other key roles that bring the series to life. Letterman, who directed the 2015 Goosebumps film, has returned to direct some of the episodes on the series, whereas Stoller has written the plot and script.
Game ZXC: Off the bat, I’d like to know if either of you read the books?
Letterman: In full disclosure, we’re slightly older than the Goosebumps audience. For me, I read them to my kids.
Stoller: My kids read them, too. I missed them by a few years.
GR: What inspired you both to work on this series?
Letterman: I did the first live-action movie back in 2015. Neal H. Moritz, who produced it, called me as the pandemic was bubbling up. He said he had the TV rights and asked if I'd consider doing it for TV, and I said yes, I was so excited. I called Nick, we have worked together in the past, and collaborate really well, and he’s a good friend. I always go to Nick with everything. It was a great excuse to work with your friend, but it was also the perfect balance of tone that we tried to bring forward, which is grounded, horror, but also comedic. That’s sort of how it came together. Plus, during the pandemic we had a lot of time to spend on Zoom calls.
Stoller: I was really excited when Rob called me about it. Mostly what I do, a lot of my work, is people fighting about romantic relationships. I love horror and coming-of-age and high school stuff, and never done it before. And something with a lot of visual effects just seemed really thrilling, not to mention the Goosebumps books have such great stories. And I love working with Rob. So, for all those reasons we kind of dove into it.
GR: Would you say the series is an honest adaptation of the style used in the books, or are you adding your own twist?
Stoller: The series, unlike the books, is serialized. So, it immediately required invention. In addition to that, we aged up the characters, just so the stakes would be higher. We played thematically with the idea of teens becoming adults. So, it is different. But, it’s within the DNA of the books, and we kept going back to what R. L. Stine told Rob about the secret to his books, and we kept going back to that just to make sure it works.
Letterman: We used the totems and concepts of the books, and mapped them to the characters that we were creating for the show. The books are an anthology, and we could not do that. So, we let all the characters interconnect and come together.
GR: Based on the synopsis and trailer, Goosebumps appears to be an original narrative and not a direct adaptation of classic stories. Why did you decide to not adapt one of the classic stories or books into the series?
Letterman: It just wasn’t enough runway with one of the books. And there are so many books, so we kind of felt like if we could take a group of five books per season and kind of explore those, that’d be more interesting. We didn’t want to be limited in terms of character, by just being stuck with one book over a whole season.
Stoller: We wanted it to be a group of friends. Each book structurally feels like a movie, and this is almost 10 hours of content, and we would run out of storytelling.
GR: The original Goosebumps series was in an anthology format, but the reboot is instead focusing an entire season on a single story. Why the change?
Stoller: I personally love anthology, but I just prefer serialized particularly when it comes to television. I like to get invested in the characters. It’s like the difference between reading a short story and a novel. It’s good to get lost in a big story and its characters. So, it was more attractive to the both of us to take a more serialized approach.
Letterman: And we like building a mythology, not reset it every week.
Stoller: There’s a spareness to R. L. Stine’s stories that has made those books timeless and brilliant, but you have to add more when working on a TV show.
GR: The Goosebumps books first came out in the 90s. Do you think the true target audience is the people who grew up reading the books? Or do you expect a younger audience to tune in?
Letterman: Both really. We noticed this on the movie side as well. The fan base that grew up reading the books were still fans in their 30s. It was amazing how much love they still had for these books. That was part of the phenomena that kids of that decade were excited to read, it was unusual at the time. And they didn’t pander to them. It was Stephen King material that was accessible for a younger reader. That core group is still out there, they are adults now. Some of them had kids, some don’t. So, we wanted to be able to play to that as well as some young Goosebumps fans who are reading it now, and to people who have never read Goosebumps. This show works on its own, with or without having read the books or know anything about it. These are very universal and relatable characters and themes.
GR: Let’s talk about the release date – you couldn’t have found a better one than Friday the 13th. Was that intentional?
Stoller: Yes. Disney has been amazing on this show. Rob and I came to them with a pretty weird pitch, which was that we wanted it to be scary, and funny, and dramatic, and there are kids, and some parents. And they were OK. Most like one thing, not like all things. Our show is an all-you-can-eat buffet. There’s a tone that we are going for that has all those things. As the first cuts were being delivered, they said it could be our big Halloween event, which was brilliant for us. There were discussions about whether they would drop all episodes at once or dole it out. I’m really glad that we are doing the latter, because it’s a pretty addictive show and it will make it a longer part of the cultural conversation if they dropped it all on October 13th.
Letterman: Credit goes to Disney for seeing on the calendar, Friday the 13th. They spotted it over a year ago.
Stoller: We’re pretty excited about it.
GR: Let’s talk about Slappy. Fans of the franchise already know that he plays a key role in the books and films. What can they expect from him in the series?
Letterman: As much as Nick and I tried to hide the fact that Slappy is in the series, he’s on the billboard! We didn’t do a good job with that particular spoiler. Fans should feel good that Slappy is in the show. But, in a way, it will subvert expectations of what people have seen in previous iterations of Slappy. We had a lot of fun building the Goosebumps mythology and diving into some of the backstories of how these things came to be. We don’t want to give anything away, but there is a lot in there for people to see.
Stoller: I love origin stories. I could watch Batman’s parents get killed 800 times, I don't get bored by that. So, for me talking about where did Slappy come from, I love it. As a fan of the genre, the origins are always interesting, and we get to expand into that.
GR: Many of the Goosebumps books had alternate endings, and the reader would get to choose theirs. Does the series offer something similar?
Letterman: I don’t know how much this is giving away. No, the fans cannot choose their own adventure in the classic sense. But, there is a nod to that in episode 5. We talk a lot about that concept because it was a popular thing in Goosebumps. There’s a scene that pays homage to that.
GR: Rob my next question is for you – you actually directed and were involved in one of the Goosebumps films. What was the difference between working on the movie and series?
Letterman: The movie is very different, both in story and concept. It was a meta idea that kind of used Goosebumps and brought it into a different universe. It was awesome. I loved making that movie, and working with Jack Black. I’ve worked with him so many times and have very fond memories of that. But, movies are very different. I’m a newbie to television, I did not know anything about TV going into this. Nick had to hold my hand quite a bit.
Stoller: I remember we were a week out of filming, and you said “the pages aren’t written,” and I said, “it’s TV.” So, Rob asked, “but where are the pages?” And I said, “they’ll show up, don’t worry about it.
Letterman: All joking aside, in a way, we went even closer to the books on this series. It’s not an anthology like we have been saying, but in terms of the spirit of diving into the books and using those stories and mapping the stories to individual characters, this series embraces the books even more.
GR: What’s next for the franchise? Can fans expect another season?
Stoller: We loved working on this, and we really hope that we’re lucky enough to get another season of it. That would be fantastic. It was fun and creatively fulfilling, and we are really proud of how it turned out.
Letterman: We would love a Season 2, but it’s all dependent on success. That’s how it works on TV. The show has to find an audience, and then we’ll figure it out.
Goosebumps premieres on Disney Plus on October 13, 2023.