Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark Director on Biggest Challenge of Adapting the Books

The Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark franchise has terrified horror fans for decades, and it’s safe to say that the film adaptation succeeded on that front as well. But given the unique design of many of the franchise’s monsters, the film adaptation faced some pretty unique challenges in its trek to the big screen. ComicBook.com got to chat with the team behind Scary Stories at this summer’s San Diego Comic-Con, where director Andre Ovredal revealed what the biggest challenge of adapting the franchise into live-action.

“I believe it’s making these characters that are black-and-white drawings come alive in a way that we could really have fans embrace them.” Ovredal explained in our interview, which you can check out above. “That always is a huge challenge. And I think we really, we were very focused on making sure that they were really based in the drawings, and then we had to do some things because it’s a color film and we’re not doing it in black-and-white.”

“So we had to also do some trickery there to ensure that you have that balance, so it stays truthful to the characters in the books, but still lives in a modern film.” Ovredal continued. “So that balance was tricky.”

“What we wanted was to try to emulate with the creatures, the black and white feeling of the illustrations in the book,” one of the film’s producers, Guillermo del Toro said in a previous interview. “So we knew we wanted them drained of color. You know? We tried to make them parchment yellow, sort of nicotine yellow and white. So we went for the desaturation in the pictures, all of them. And obviously you light them differently.”

With generally-positive reviews and a profitable box office run, it seems as if audiences responded well to the way the Scary Stories creatures were adapted into live-action. And although a sequel has not been formally discussed, del Toro and Ovredal have already considered what stories from the franchise they could adapt next.

“There is ‘High Beams,’ [Ovredal] wants very bad,” del Toro shared with ComicBook.com. “And ‘The Ribbon,’ I love. I think it’s also one of those, the outcome of that story is so memorable, and it’s very, very short. Has such a great visual gag.”

Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark is now in theaters.