More than two decades after the first Goosebumps books suggested that every seemingly friendly suburban façade hides a Twilight Zone-esque twist, Sony and Scholastic Media have pulled the mask off of Goosebumps author R.L. Stine to reveal… Jack Black? Black has been linked to the project since September 2013, at which point the actor was said to be playing a “Stine-like author.” Readers trained on picking up context cues from years of reading Goosebumps books, however, saw right through that “Stine-like” ruse, anticipating the shocking reveal that Black will play a fictionalized version of the author opposite Prisoners’ Dylan Minnette. Minnette plays another quantity familiar to grown-up Stine devotees: an audience surrogate/object of schadenfreude protagonist, this time tasked with wrangling the many horrors of the Goosebumps series (not just one type of Monster Blood—but four) after they escape from Stine’s imagination.
All those creatures run the risk of getting mixed up with the other projects on Black’s suddenly packed schedule, including the recently picked-up HBO series The Brink and the high-school reunion comedy The D-Train. The latter re-teams Black with School Of Rock and Orange County screenwriter (and co-creator of 2013’s best TV show) Mike White—who, in a further Stine-like twist, also co-wrote the Goosebumps script. Oh and also the wrong evil dummy was destroyed by that steamroller—AH LOOK OUT BEHIND YOU!