Exclusive: ‘Goosebumps’ EPs Talk Turning Up the Scares for a New Generation

Goosebumps fans can rejoice as the show is returning to television just in time for Halloween. Disney+ and Hulu will premiere the first five (of ten) episodes on Friday, October 13th, as part of the Hallowstream and Huluween lineups. New episodes will be available every Friday until November 17th.

Developed by executive producers Nicholas Stoller (Platonic, Bros, Forgetting Sarah Marshall) and Rob Letterman (Pokémon: Detective Pikachu, Goosebumps 2015, Shark Tale), the remake follows a group of high school teenagers who are punished by supernatural forces for their parents’ sins. It stars Justin Long, Rachael Harris, Zack Morris, Isa Briones, Miles McKenna, Ana Yi Puig, and Will Price.

We talked with Letterman and Stoller about R.L. Stine’s classic themes, making things a bit scarier this time around, and the possibility of seeing more Goosebumps stories come to life.

Horror Geek Life: It’s great to see Goosebumps return, and the new series really takes the horror up a notch. What made you decide to bring on the scares?

Nicholas Stoller: I think audiences like being scared. And so, it seemed like, why not bring that? Not make it too scary, but make it scary. Make it fun. But certainly, the movies that I grew up with, like The Lost Boys or whatever, that’s pretty scary. It doesn’t pull its punches. And so, I feel like we wanted to try to do that while still being family-friendly. We didn’t want to give kids nightmares or anything, but we wanted kind of a thrill ride.

Rob Letterman: It’s harder to write honest characters when you’re pandering down to a younger age group. In order to be authentic and tell the story you want to tell, we needed to age it up with our characters. And then that sort of elevated everything else once we did that.

And let’s be honest, when Goosebumps came out in the nineties, there’s still a big fan base of people who are now in their thirties and forties who love those books. And we wanted to make something for them as well. So, it really had to be a show that worked for adults and younger teens.

Horror Geek Life: Absolutely. Many original fans now want to watch it with their children, so you’re bringing Goosebumps to a new generation on television. Did you feel much pressure trying to appeal to viewers of all ages?

Nicholas Stoller: Yeah, I mean, I can’t really write anything that I personally wouldn’t enjoy. I feel like Rob’s the same way. It needs to make us laugh and entertain us. And then we also wanted to entertain tweens and teens. And we want it to work for people who love Goosebumps and for people who’ve never even heard of Goosebumps and just want to watch a fun horror comedy thing.

Our natural inclination is to try to entertain as many people as possible. This felt like it would naturally and organically do that if we approached it the right way. But it was just trying to tell an honest story about high school, which was where we started.

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Horror Geek Life: Rob, you came back to the franchise. What made now the right time to revamp this TV series that’s been off the air for almost three decades?

Rob Letterman: I mean, opportunity knocked. Neal Moritz, who produced the movie that I did, got the rights to do it as a TV series and called just as the pandemic was kicking in and was like, do you want to do that as a TV show? And I jumped at that. I wanted to, it’s my first time in TV. So I was looking for an excuse and also looking for an excuse to work with Nick again. We’ve worked many times in the past, and we worked so well together.

I don’t know if it was as much timing in the outside world as it’s personal timing of, what a great opportunity. Do something with a friend and work on material that I loved.

I also think Goosebumps is just a big sandbox. We’re telling a lot of story in this TV series. We’re using the excuse to do a real deep dive into stories, like Nick was saying, of high school and our memories of high school. We’re parents of teenagers going through high school now. So we have a really interesting insight into that era right now. It just felt like the right time.

Horror Geek Life: And Nicholas, with your previous experience and wit, you’re a great fit with this series. How did you get involved, and what made you take it on?

Nicholas Stoller: I’ve never been described as having wit. I like that. There’s something very classy about that. I normally get “goofball.”

Rob called me, and I love working with him. We kind of just have the same tone, and we speak the same language. To Disney’s credit, when we explained the show to them, we were like, it’s horror, but it’s funny, but it’s dramatic. It’s kids, but there’s adults. They’re like, yeah, we got it. There wasn’t a lot of explaining to do, which was a testament to them because most things tend to be one thing or another. I think there’s a little bit more mixing of genres now if you look at any number of things, but this is a mix of stuff intentionally.

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I was very excited. Most of the things I’ve done are just people fighting about romance. And so to get to do something that had horror, I love horror. I’ve never had the opportunity to do it, but to get to do something that had horror elements. I love The Shining. I watch it like every year, like a weirdo. And also get to do something with visual effects, which Rob is the king at using visual effects, but it’s not something I’ve really done a lot of. To get to play with those things and then to get to tell a coming-of-age high school story was really exciting.

And then to get to use all these stories, these timeless Goosebumps stories, was really kind of a no-brainer. We figured out the pilot pretty quickly and the world of it pretty fast. It’s been a pretty thrilling creative experience for all those reasons.

Horror Geek Life: As you mentioned, the great thing about R. L. Stine is his timeless themes. Things that worked in 1990 can work today. Do you foresee more of his stories coming to life in the near future?

Nicholas Stoller: I think his books are timeless. The storytelling is great, and there’s not a lot of cultural references in them, like pop cultural references. They’re not dated. There’s not like a Hootie and the Blowfish reference from the nineties. You know what I mean?

Horror Geek Life: I would actually love that.

Nicholas Stoller: I kind of want that. But it’s very focused on whatever horror story he’s telling. And so, I think that lends itself, therefore, to being timeless and being something that you can keep using. The stories themselves have a primal quality to them. I think about something like The Haunted Mask; there’s something very primal about that.

Rob Letterman: We don’t foresee anything. We hope. All we can do is hope. We would love to keep going, and there are a lot more people than just us involved in this thing as well. I should be pretty clear about that. And I think everyone involved would love to keep going. There’s a lot more story to tell. There’s so much.

We grabbed those first five books and dived in, and there’s so many books. There’s so many hooks in there. We dropped a lot of hooks in our first season and set ourselves up nicely in hopes that we get a shot at doing it again. But yeah, there’s a lot of runway.