Fear Street Trilogy Stars Share Their Excitement for the Ambitious Netflix Film Series

For the decades since their debut, Fear Street fans have hoped to see the R.L. Stine books brought to life in some capacity, especially due to his Goosebumps book series both being adapted as a TV series and as movies over the years, with Netflix finally delivering the highly anticipated event with a trilogy of films all from director Leigh Janiak. While all of the films unfold in the creepy community of Shadyside, the films span multiple decades in the town’s history, an experience made all the more impressive by the fact that each installment was filmed back to back to back in an extended production schedule. Fear Street Part 1: 1994 and Fear Street Part 2: 1978 are both streaming now, and Fear Street Part 3: 1666 debuts on July 16th.

“I had done horror movies but none quite like this,” Gillian Jacobs shared with ComicBook.com of her interest in the project. “I also grew up reading R.L. Stine and Fear Street so I had that excitement and nostalgia for it and I also loved the idea that she was going to make all three of them at the same time, so she was going to be able to weave all the different kinds of stories in separate R.L. Stine books all in this one trilogy, which I thought was really smart and captured the essence of what I loved about the books as a kid.”

Given the challenges of a long shoot and century-spanning narrative, the endeavor could have been an overwhelming adventure, but Janiak’s vision helped keep the films focused.

“We knew we were in such good hands. Leigh threaded so many needles and stitched it all together right at the end and, on set, it didn’t even feel like we were making a horror film,” Ashley Zukerman explained. “We were just making something between a comedy and a drama where things mattered to people. And they mattered a lot. And the horror, if anything, gave us the ability to give a lot and to care a lot in each moment. I think part of what Leigh’s interested in is just making things incredibly honest and nuanced and real and I think that’s what it felt like on set.”

With the Fear Street books being geared towards teen-aged readers, they became formative horror experiences for a specific generation of readers. Darrell Britt-Gibson went on to recall an early horror experience he had that has stuck with him all these years.

“One of my older brothers showed me Jaws. And I’m a big fan of the ocean and the water and I remember him showing me that and it ruining my life temporarily,” Britt-Gibson recalled. “And ‘temporarily’ being to this day. Every time I’m in the ocean, I just know that Jaws is there. I don’t know where he is or when he’s coming for me, but he’s there. They didn’t blow him up, he’s still around.”

Fear Street Part 1: 1994 and Fear Street Part 2: 1978 are both streaming now, and Fear Street Part 3: 1666 debuts on July 16th.

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