Filmmakers discuss Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark in new featurette

Last Updated on August 5, 2021

The André Øvredal-directed, Guillermo del Toro-produced feature adaptation of author Alvin Schwartz's book series SCARY STORIES TO TELL IN THE DARK is set to reach theatres in less than a month, and in anticipation of the film's release a featurette has arrived online to give a peek behind the scenes.

In the video embedded below, Øvredal, del Toro, and some of the cast members discuss the process of bringing the short horror stories Schwartz wrote to the screen, and bringing the creatures and troubling images to life in a way that's faithful to the Stephen Gammell artwork featured in the books.

SCARY STORIES TO TELL IN THE DARK is rated PG-13 for terror/violence, disturbing images, thematic elements, language including racial epithets, and brief sexual references, which sounds plenty harsh for a project like this. Øvredal describes it as a mixture of a modern horror movie and a throwback to the Amblin movies he grew up watching.

The film has the following synopsis: 

It’s 1968 in America. Change is blowing in the wind…but seemingly far removed from the unrest in the cities is the small town of Mill Valley where for generations, the shadow of the Bellows family has loomed large. It is in their mansion on the edge of town that Sarah, a young girl with horrible secrets, turned her tortured life into a series of scary stories, written in a book that has transcended time—stories that have a way of becoming all too real for a group of teenagers who discover Sarah’s terrifying home.

Dan and Kevin Hageman wrote the screenplay, working from a screen story by del Toro, Patrick Melton, and Marcus Dunstan. Sean Daniel, Jason F. Brown, J. Miles Dal, and Elizabeth Grave produced the film with del Toro.

Zoe Colletti, Michael Garza, Gabriel Rush, Austin Abrams, Dean Norris, Gil Bellows, Lorraine Toussaint, Austin Zajur, and Natalie Ganzhorn star.

SCARY STORIES TO TELL IN THE DARK arrives in theatres on August 9th.