R.L. Stine’s ‘Fear Street’ Coming To The Big Screen
Following in the footsteps ofGoosebumps,R.L. Stine’sother hit series from the 1990s will also be coming soon to a theater near you. AFear Streetmovie is in the works at 20th Century Fox, as confirmed by Stine himself. Read about theFear Streetmovie news after the jump.
TheWrapreports 20th Century Fox is teaming with Chernin Entertainment to develop theFear Streetmovie. “I’m not allowed to say, but yeah, there’s something happening,” Stine told the trade. “I’m usually a loose cannon but they really didn’t want me to talk about it.”
TheFear Streetseries first launched in 1989, predating even theGoosebumpsbooks. The franchise has released over 100 titles to date, including the core series as well as various spinoffs, and over 80 million copies have been sold to date. The books were hugely popular in the 1990s but petered out in the 2000s, before getting revived in 2014 withParty Games.
In contrast to the preteen-skewingGoosebumpsseries, theFear Streetnovels tend to be murder mysteries and thrillers aimed at a teen audience. There’s less overt humor (though there’s still plenty of cheesiness) and fewer supernatural elements. The series takes place in the town of Shadyside, Ohio, where the titular Fear Street is located.
Stine’sGoosebumpswas picked up by Columbia Pictures in 2008, and has now been adapted into a movie starring Jack Black and directed by Rob Letterman. That film is already getting some decent reviews, and will hopefully do well as a kid-friendly alternative to Guillermo del Toro’s R-ratedCrimson Peakthis weekend.
Fear Streetalso fits well with the wave of ’90s nostalgia currently flooding pop culture. This summer’s big-screen hits included aJurassic Parksequeland anN.W.A. biopic; continuations ofTwin Peaks,The X-Files, andFull Houseare in the works; and Nickelodeon just recently announceda ’90s programming block.
In other words, it was probably just a matter of time before someone got it into their head to make aFear Streetmovie. Now the question should be which studio will scoop up the works of Christopher Pike, who was regarded in my suburban junior high school as being kind of like Stine, only way smuttier.
