There’s a new Goosebumps on Disney+ sure to give those who didn’t grow up reading R.L. Stine books, well, goosebumps. Speaking to a group of reporters in a roundtable interview at the 2023 New York Comic-Con, Goosebumps executive producers discussed what we will and won’t see in Season 1.
In attendance at NYCC were Rob Letterman and Nick Stoller, who developed the series, as well as their fellow executive producers Hillary Winston, Conor Welch, and Pavun Shetty. The creators reflect the show’s spooky/silly balance. Stoller is the comedic creative behind Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Neighbors, Bros, and more. Letterman directed the 2015 film Goosebumps and Monsters vs. Aliens.
The ten-episode season dropped five episodes on October 13, with weekly episodes in the subsequent weeks. Unlike the 1995 Goosebumps series, there isn’t a 1:1 book-to-episode ratio when it comes to adaptation. The Disney+ series is a serialized story that combines storylines from a handful of Goosebumps books into one story with one set of characters.
At NYCC, the producers discussed that decision and how they organized the season. Also, this time around, many of the people behind the scenes grew up as fans of the books. Since this new series represents only a small fraction of the Goosebumps canon, there must be some books they couldn’t get to, right?
“We luckily have access to the whole series,” Conor Welch said to The Mary Sue at the table. “I won’t speak specifically, so it’s not to give any spoilers, but this one draws from five of the most popular of the canon for the first five episodes. Pulls some Easter eggs from others throughout. We hope to draw on many more for hopefully many, many seasons to come.”
Goosebumps is not yet renewed for Season 2. But obviously the producers are hopeful. “There’s so many books,” Letterman told the group. “So by design, the show’s able to keep going and keep mining all the different books.” There are 62 books in the original Goosebumps series, and that’s not including the choose-your-own-adventure books, Goosebumps 2000, Tales to Give You Goosebumps, Goosebumps Most Wanted, Goosebumps Hall of Horrors, etc.
“Once we cracked the big idea of making it serialized following five teens,” Letterman continued, “and almost the first five episodes being origin stories for our five characters […] then we started mapping what we thought were the best books to those characters. And without making them too similar—we like jumping [around] different sub-genres of horror as well.”
Stoller, unlike Welch, spoke specifically about a favorite story you won’t see in Season 1. “One of the books that we tried to get in, but fell out was The Girl Who Cried Monster,” Stoller said to the group. “That was a really fun one. The idea of a teacher turning this turning into a monster is very scary.” But ultimately it didn’t fit, and felt a bit repetitive given [spoiler alert] what happens to Justin Long’s character in the series. Plus, “it got too stalker-y,” added Letterman.
Ideally, Goosebumps will continue beyond this first short-ish season and get to all of the favorite stories and deeper cuts. The series certainly won’t be wanting for source material! Did I mention how many books there are? “There’s so many things, even within the Goosebumps book world,” said Hillary Winston. “There are spinoff book series, Slappy World and stuff. It would just be really fun to see all the places that this could go.”
“Goosebumps anime,” interjected Letterman. “Come on guys, this is Comic-Con!”
(featured image: David Astorga/Disney+)
