This year’s Sony panel at San Diego Comic Con was primarily a showcase for the forthcoming movie adaptation of R. L. Stine’s Goosebumps book series, starring Jack Black and debuting in August of 2015. (Chris Colombus also video’d in to apologize for not having any Pixels footage for anyone, especially after that awesome action shot with Peter Dinklage.)
Sony also headed off any Marvel Universe news at the pass by announcing the day before that Amazing Spider-Man 3 and Sinister Six were moving, prompting to Marvel Studios to immediately hoover up the vacated movie premiere dates.
But anyway, here’s what a Goosebumps movie could possibly be about!
Jack Black is playing R. L. Stine himself, although very much a sinister, fictional version of the author. The movie’s director Rob Letterman was also on hand to explain the premise of the film. According to io9:
“The idea behind the movie is what if all of R.L. Stine’s creatures got loose and [the characters] have to go on an adventure to put them back in?”
Which means we’ll be seeing all, or almost all, of the famous series’ monsters at once as they gang up against Stine under the leadership of Slappy the Dummy, one of the more notable of Stine’s creations and “R. L. Stine’s dark side.”
Yeah, there you go. By the end of the panel it was just a room full of people and that menacing wooden face.
The idea of the Goosebumps series being a beloved children’s book series and a series of traps for otherworldly monsters is a fun one, and Jack Black tends to be at his best when he’s rallying children to take down scuzzbuckets. We are cautiously optimistic for this one!
Although we’d hate to see the same approach brought to the Boxcar Children….
Photo via Nick de Semlyen
All of our ongoing San Diego Comic Con 2014 coverage can be found here.
