Tim Burton Almost Produced a ‘Goosebumps’ Movie

Author R.L. Stine‘s series of Goosebumps horror books came to life in a feature film in 2015, which earned itself a sequel earlier this year. The author himself recently detailed the experience he had back in the ’90s when filmmaker Tim Burton had expressed interest in helping adapt the property into a film.

“We had a movie deal to do a Goosebumps movie, and I can’t tell you what year it was. It was like at the height of Goosebumps, back in ’94, ’95, around there, and we actually had a deal with Fox to do a movie, and Tim Burton, who was going to be the producer,” Stine shared with CinemaBlend. “We had a big meeting, and I thought, ‘Oh, that’ll be great. Tim Burton and Goosebumps. It’ll be great.’ And we had a nice meeting with him, and we had a great time and we talked about what we should do, and then nothing happened. Sort of a typical story out there, right?”

The novels delivered young readers various tales of terror, featuring everything from monsters in a basement to masks that possessed wearers to the discovery that neighbors were otherworldly beings. Thanks to projects like Beetlejuice and Edward Scissorhands, Burton’s blend of the macabre with fantasy seemed like the perfect fit for the project, only for those plans to fall through.

Stine added that the project that drew Burton away from Goosebumps was another project that ultimately fell through.

“He got involved in some Superman project that also never happened. He was going to do Superman, and then we never heard from him again,” Stine confirmed. “That was the end of it. And 20 years later we got a movie.”

The project was Superman Lives, which featured Nicolas Cage as the iconic hero.

Both Goosebumps movies borrowed elements from the novels, and with the series having dozens of entries, there was plenty of material to draw from. Stine added that the film in the ’90s would have taken a similar route, even if there were fewer published novels at the time.

“I think we were going to do a new story, but use some of the elements. But we never got that far, you know? It’s very strange. I don’t know,” the author recalled. “People couldn’t figure out for a long time which story to do, what should we do. And then Goosebumps wasn’t as popular, and then it came back.”

Goosebumps 2 lands on Digital HD on December 25th and on Blu-ray and DVD on January 15, 2019.

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