The long in development GOOSEBUMPS movie is finally in production under director Rob Letterman (GULLIVER’S TRAVELS) with star Jack Black appearing as none-other than R.L. Stine. Stine is the real life author of the GOOSEBUMPS series of books which will get a meta-twist in the big screen adventure. Sony has unveiled the full plot synopsis for the film which has just starting filming in Georgia.
We also have learned that the film will co-star Dylan Minnette (PRISONERS) and Odeya Rush (THE GIVER). Unlike the TV series from the 1990s based on the books, the movie will not be an anthology but rather have one of the most batshit plots I have seen in a long time. Check out the synopsis below.
In Goosebumps, upset about moving from a big city to a small town, teenager Zach Cooper (Dylan Minnette) finds a silver lining when he meets the beautiful girl, Hannah (Odeya Rush), living right next door. But every silver lining has a cloud, and Zach’s comes when he learns that Hannah has a mysterious dad who is revealed to be R. L. Stine (Jack Black), the author of the bestselling Goosebumps series. It turns out that there is a reason why Stine is so strange… he is a prisoner of his own imagination – the monsters that his books made famous are real, and Stine protects his readers by keeping them locked up in their books. When Zach unintentionally unleashes the monsters from their manuscripts and they begin to terrorize the town, it’s suddenly up to Stine, Zach, and Hannah to get all of them back in the books where they belong.
While this sounds like the world’s biggest commercial as all of the existing GOOSEBUMPS books are easily reprintable now and are a direct part of the film’s story, I cannot help but think this could be a cool concept. Scary movies for kids are a rarity these days and this could be a fun one to put alongside PARANORMAN and MONSTER HOUSE. While GULLIVER’S TRAVELS was pretty awful, it did make decent use of visual effects, so hopefull GOOSEBUMPS follows suit.
GOOSEBUMPS will debut sometime in 2016.