Norris, Bellows, Toussaint on board for Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark

Last Updated on August 2, 2021

At the end of last month, an adaptation of author Alvin Schwartz's SCARY STORIES TO TELL IN THE DARK book series began filming with André Øvredal directing, Guillermo del Toro producing, and Zoe Colletti in the lead role of Stella Michaels, 

a young girl still haunted by her mother’s disappearance on Halloween night — an incident that she suspects her father knows more about than he lets on. Years later, Stella and her friends are involved in a Halloween prank gone wrong. But are they really at fault, or was it the work of a vengeful spirit — a female ghost who uses her scary stories to come after the teens when they begin to investigate the disappearance of several children? 

Gabriel Rush, Austin Zajur, Michael Garza, Austin Abrams, and Natalie Ganzhorn were announced as being in the supporting cast, filling unspecified roles, and with the film a couple weeks into production another casting announcement has been made, revealing the names of three more actors who are taking on unspecified roles. Those actors are: 

Dean Norris, who may be best known for playing Hank Schrader on Breaking Bad or "Big Jim" Rennie on Under the Dome, but I became a fan of his when he played Twitchell on the short-lived Tremors television series back in 2003.

Gil Bellows (pictured above), who had a role in THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION and was on the show Ally McBeal as Billy Thomas, but to me he'll always be Watty Watts from the awesome 1994 movie LOVE AND A .45.

Lorraine Toussaint, who has racked up over 100 credits during her 35 year career. She was in HUDSON HAWK as Almond Joy, she has most recently been playing Cressida on Into the Badlands, but after watching her play the villainous Vee on Orange Is the New Black I'm hoping she'll be bringing to life some sort of terrifying being in SCARY STORIES TO TELL IN THE DARK. She was scary as hell on Orange.

Øvredal had this to say about the new cast members: 

Lorraine, Gil, and Dean are exceptionally talented actors who also happen to be game for all of the creepy madness that this film entails. We are thrilled to have them aboard our macabre little train."

Sean Daniel, Jason Brown, J. Miles Dale, and Elizabeth Grave are producing the film with del Toro, who also wrote the screenplay with Kevin Hageman, Dan Hageman, Patrick Melton, and Marcus Dunstan.

Harold the human scarecrow and "the girl who has spiders crawl out of her face" are said to be elements from Schwartz's books that will be making it onto the screen in this film.

SCARY STORIES TO TELL IN THE DARK will be released sometime in 2019.