Disney+ Developing Halloween Comedy Film Spooked

Disney+ is thinking ahead and gearing up for an original movie for Halloween time. The Hollywood Reporter brings word of Spooked, a supernatural comedy in the works at the streaming service. Irish filmmaker Peter Foott has been tapped to re-write the script by Tyler Burton Smith and direct the film. They note plot details are mostly under wraps but “the storyline involves a Halloween night gone awry as trick or treaters are transformed into whatever costume they are wearing.” Aladdin producers Dan Lin and Jonathan Eirich will produce. The feature film was originally set up at 20th Century Fox, now absorbed by Disney and being put into the works.

It’s unclear if this film is being developed and conceived as something to be released on Disney+ at Halloween time, if so it wouldn’t arrive until 2021 at the earliest. Furthermore it remains to be seen if this project will exploit Disney’s massive IP vaults for the

Currently there’s only a handful of content on the service that leans into the spooky season, with movies like The Nightmare Before Christmas, The Haunted Mansion, and Frankenweenie available for streaming. Some of the Halloween-themed Disney Channel Original movies are also available including all four HalloweenTown films, Phantom of the Megaplex, and Mom’s Got a Date With a Vampire.

Another major Halloween title on the service is the classic Hocus Pocus, with rumor long suggesting that the highly anticipated sequel to that film would arrive on Disney+. The first concrete evidence of the project arrived back in March with news that Disney had hired director Adam Shankman to helm Hocus Pocus 2 as a Disney+ original film.

The new Hocus Pocus movie is aiming to be a sequel to the 1993 film, rather than a straight-up remake. This means that the producers are hoping to get the original actresses — Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker, Kathy Najimy — to reprise their roles as the Sanderson Sisters, all of whom reportedly want to appear.

“I think that is something that Bette, Kathy, and I are very hospitable to the idea and I think for a long time people had been talking about it as if people were moving forward with it in a real way but we were unaware of it,” Parker said on SiriusXM’s Radio Andy back in May. “I think now we have gotten to the point where we all have agreed publicly to the right people that ‘Yes, that would be a very, very fun idea.’ So we’ll see what the future holds.”

(Cover Photo by Iranzu Larrasoana Oneca/NurPhoto via Getty Images)