Nearly eighty years after he first appeared, Casper the Friendly Ghost is still hanging around. Variety reports that a new live-action series about Casper is in development at the Peacock streaming service. Coming to us from writer / executive producer Kai Yu Wu, with UCP and DreamWorks Animation co-producing, this take on the Casper concept is described as being “a horror/adventure show” that will
reimagine the origin of Casper in a coming-of-age story that explores what it means to be alive. When a new family arrives in the small town of Eternal Falls, Casper finds himself entangled in a mystery uncovering dark secrets that have been buried for over 100 years.
Here’s some background on Casper, courtesy of Wikipedia:
Casper the Friendly Ghost is the protagonist of the Famous Studios theatrical animated cartoon series of the same name. He is a pleasant, personable and translucent ghost, but often criticized by his three wicked uncles, the Ghostly Trio.
The character was featured in 55 theatrical cartoons made between 1945 and 1959. The character has been featured in comic books published by Harvey Comics since 1952, and Harvey purchased the character outright in 1959. Casper became one of Harvey’s most popular characters, headlining dozens of comic book titles.
Following Harvey’s purchase of the character, he appeared in five television series: Matty’s Funday Funnies (1959–1961), The New Casper Cartoon Show (1963–1970), Casper and the Angels (1979–1980), The Spooktacular New Adventures of Casper (1996–1998) and Casper’s Scare School (2009–2012). The character made a theatrical-film appearance in a live-action adaptation released by Universal Pictures, Casper (1995), becoming the first ever computer-generated character to star in a film, and he would later appear in four direct-to-video and made-for-TV follow-up films.
Wu’s previous writing credits include NBC’s Hannibal, The CW’s The Flash, ABC’s Deception, and Netflix’s The Ghost Bride. She also created The Ghost Bride, which happened to be about a spirit getting wrapped up in a mystery. So you can see how that might lead to her taking on this Casper series.
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