I guess you could say I'm a big fan of R.L. Stine's FEAR STREET teen-horror novella series. After all, I read the books in middle school, along with Stine's other series GOOSEBUMPS, and still to this day I own a copy or two.
Two, actually. THE PROM QUEEN and CHEERLEADERS: THE FIRST EVIL.
I recently reread these two books and low and behold they aren't great. Duh. Go figure. That said, the cover art is f*cking great (for the whole series; mostly) in that they remind me of old school VHS cover boxes. And if you know anything about this guy, it's that Mike loves himself some VHS. In fact, if this was the early 2000's my "cool horror writer" name would be MikeVHS. Catchy. huh?
Anyhow, our own Eric Walkuski was recently chatting with WAR FOR THE PLANET OF THE APES producer Peter Cherin and asked him if he could possibly spill a few beans on the upcoming FEAR STREET flick. Here is what the man had to say.
Producer Peter Chernin on FEAR STREET:
"I can't tell you much, but we're working on it really hard. We have the coolest idea ever for it. It's a hard thing to say in this business, but I think it's never been done. We're working on it really hard. I hope in the next few months we'll have something to announce, but we've got some cool, cool stuff for a franchise."
"… but I think it's never been done before." Dood! What the hell does that mean? There are a few ways a FEAR STREET movie could go: One, they do an anthology. Two, they do like a soft GRINDHOUSE-style anthology of, like, two tales. Three, they adapt one book per flick. Or, four, they just keep the title and come up something new altogether.
Now we have already heard that the FEAR STREET film will be an all-new story, so I'm thinking they are going the way of just keeping the title (and R.L. Stine's name) and then coming up with something completely new.
Now is this good or bad news? Do you even care about a FEAR STREET flick? I think it would make a great TV series – or, more specifically, a tolerable CW series. Something ala that Archie show people are saying isn't bad.
FEAR STREET rundown (via Wikipedia)
Fear Street is a teenage horror fiction series written by American author R. L. Stine, starting in 1989. In 1995, a series of books inspired by the Fear Street series, called Ghosts of Fear Street, was created for younger readers and were more like the Goosebumps books in that they featured paranormal adversaries (ghosts, vampires, monsters, aliens, etc.) and sometimes had twist endings.
R. L. Stine stopped writing Fear Street after penning the Fear Street Seniors spin-off in 1999. In summer 2005, he brought Fear Street back with the three-part Fear Street Nights miniseries.
As of 2010, over 80 million copies of Fear Street have been sold.
R. L. Stine revived the book series in October 2014. In October 2015, it was reported a film based on the series was being developed.
We will make sure to let you guys know about any further FEAR STREET news as the movie progresses further into production. Until then let us know what YOU think of R.L. Stine's FEAR STREET series on Facebook, Twitter and/or Instagram!