The Monster Squad Director Was Approached About Adapting It Into a TV Series But Turned It Down

Filmmaker Fred Dekker is responsible for iconic genre films from the ’80s, with one of his biggest successes being 1987’s The Monster Squad. The film combined the spirit of adventure of a film like The Goonies with horror’s long history of bringing together a number of iconic monsters for a film that delighted devout genre audiences and burgeoning movie fans. In the decades since the film’s debut, few movies have managed to capture that unique blend of humor and horror, leaving audiences to wonder why a studio hasn’t attempted to revive the property. Dekker revealed that, while he was personally approached to adapt the concept into a TV series, he ultimately passed on it.

“I’ll be completely honest, Shane Black and I have both been approached about adapting The Monster Squad for television,” Dekker revealed to Moviefone. “Was it my first choice? No. But I’m a big fan now of long-form television. I think Breaking Bad was a seminal viewing experience for me that I equated with The Godfather. I think it’s the modern version of The Godfather. It just happens to be 62 hours long instead of, you know, two-and-a-half to three-hours long. So I’m a big fan of that. And figuring out a way to take Monster Squad and turn it into a long-form series was very exciting to me. But when we were approached, it was right after Stranger Things.”

While many fans have connected strongly with Netflix’s Stranger Things, some fans feel it’s too derivative of a number other sci-fi projects, including The Monster Squad. Dekker is one of those who sees the similarities.

“Hollywood has, as you must know, a monkey see, monkey do a business where, ‘Oh, well that’s successful, so let’s just rip that off,’” Dekker explained. “So Shane and I had a meeting at Paramount. I said, ‘Let me just clarify — you guys want us to do a rip off of a rip off of us?’ And they all sort of laughed. But that’s basically what it came down to. And my other thought was on The Monster Squad was to show us the squad as they are now, because the fans that discovered the movie when they were very young, the age of the kids in the film, they may not have seen in the movie theater. They may have seen it on HBO or on video, but they grew up with it in the same way that the characters in that movie would have grown up.”

Black also pointed out the similarity of their premise to a classic Stephen King story that prevented them from pursuing this concept.

“I thought, well, let’s make this movie for the people who fell in love when they were kids and say, ‘Where is the squad as adults?’” Dekker detailed. “And Shane said to me, ‘Well that’s it.’ I said, ‘Yeah, it’s a great idea.’ And he goes, ‘No, that’s Stephen King’s IT. The first part of the book and the first movie is them as kids fighting monsters and the second movie is them as adults fighting monsters.’ So as a fan of the genre, there is nothing to me remotely interesting or new about Monster Squad as a movie or a TV show. Maybe in 10 years, maybe in 15 years. But right now it’s like, well everybody’s already doing it.”

Stay tuned for details on the future of The Monster Squad.

Would you have liked to see Dekker’s idea come to life? Let us know in the comments below or hit up @TheWolfman on Twitter to talk all things horror and Star Wars!