Bringing R.L. Stine’s Goosebumps books to the big screen has been an ongoing effort since they exploded in popularity in the 1990s. The Goosebumps movie that hits theaters this week, starring Jack Black, has “cracked” the mystery of how exactly to bring Stine’s world to the screen, according to our exclusive interview with the film’s director, Rob Letterman.
They truly thought outside the box with Goosebumps as they tell a story of a single mom (Amy Ryan) and her teenage son (Dylan Minnette) who move next door to a cinematic version of Stine (Black, impeccably cast) and his teenage daughter. As the two teens become friends, things happen that inadvertently release the monsters from Stine’s books to terrify their small Delaware town. Stine, with his teenage helpers, must work quickly before monster mayhem spreads outside their fair town’s borders.
Letterman helped craft the script and tells The Movie Mensch about his inspirations for making a movie that works for all audiences, much like the Amblin ones he used to enjoy as a kid. The filmmaker also lets us know why he thinks Stine’s books have become so popular. After all, one does not think horror and children’s books go hand-in-hand. But in Stine’s world, they sure do. And with Goosebumps, everyone involved has hit a Halloween home run for the entire family.
The Movie Mensch: This is a genius idea, how do you capture Goosebumps? Let’s go outside the box completely! What was your take on what they did with it?
Rob Letterman: When I first heard they were doing it, Neil Moritz called me and told me that my name had popped up as a potential contender to direct Goosebumps, they were going out to a lot of directors. It had been around a long time in development and no one had been able to crack it. So, I asked him to give me, in a couple of sentences, the big idea. Right away, the concept of that, I immediately clued in to. For whatever reason, at that time I was reminiscing about all these Amblin movie that I loved and I’ve been in the family genre for my whole career, I was remembering when I was a kid, the Back to the Futures, the E.T.s, the Gremlins, The Goonies, The Jurassic Parks, they were family movies. They were general audience films and I loved them. I loved going to the movies with my parents and people of all ages. So, when he told me what the big idea was, in my brain I immediately thought that was a great excuse to do that kind of movie. I asked for the script. I broke it down, I went in and gave this big presentation to the studio and it wasn’t an Amblin movie on the page at all, but I was like, “This has the potential to do what those movies did if we do this to it.” Then we did an enormous amount of work on the script to get it to where it is now.
The Movie Mensch: You know, people seemed so surprised that Jurassic World did as well as it did. But I remember friends posting pictures of them taking their kids and their parents to see it, and that’s six tickets right there. That’s why it did so well.
Rob Letterman: That’s a good point. You know, that was a hard pitch for this film. Everything nowadays is a comparison to what’s working currently. So, it’s family movies are animated or they’re Marvel movies or Transformers. It was a hard pitch at the time because it hadn’t been done. It’s been 20 or 30 years since these movies were out. They were like, “No, that’s not going to work.” Movies are these targeted things. It was great, and I’m very lucky and fortunate that the studio was open to this particular take and the producers were into it. It felt good when we were making it.
The Movie Mensch: It is different than the Goosebumps books. But, that being said, how much of a help was R.L. Stine?
Rob Letterman: It is different than the Goosebumps books, because it is not one of the stories. But, I really tried very hard to break down the structure of a Goosebumps book. Jack (Black) and I flew out to meet with R.L. Stine, mostly to get his blessing, but to make sure he was OK and to get his thoughts on it. Also, it was to talk to him about the constructs of his books. In that conversation, we talked about comedy and horror and mashing that up to create a tone. Also, a lot of those books are… kid comes to town, adults don’t believe the kids, there’s a mystery going on next door. You have to solve the mystery despite the fact that your parents don’t believe you. That is a common thread. We dove into the script and tried to make that work. It is very much in the spirit of the books. It is an original tale and it has this great Meta idea. It is very, very true to the beats of a Goosebumps book.
The Movie Mensch: What do you think it is about the Goosebumps books that they are so resonant?
Rob Letterman: I have kids and I read it to them, they don’t pander to children. This is something that R.L. Stine told us in our meeting. I read a lot of books to my kids that do pander to kids, and certain movies do too. I think these books hit a nerve because they don’t. He pushes up to a point where it’s not inappropriate for kids, but he also puts them through the paces of a Stephen King novel. These are great storytelling vehicles. These are real kids and real issues at home. There’s funny things, scary things. It’s not egregious and saves the reveals, the tension builds. There are a lot of great literature qualities to those books. For me, that’s the key.