Look out Hotel Transylvania, there's a new kids Halloween movie franchise coming to theaters!
You're watching Beyond The Trailer's review of Goosebumps!
Hotel Transylvania has been a huge hit for Sony Animation, breaking box office records
for September with EACH new movie! With the first Hotel Transylvania, Sony lucked out
that both Disney's Frankenweenie and Paramount's Fun Size failed to find an audience, giving
them a monopoly on Halloween moviegoing for the entire month of October. But with Hotel
Transylvania 2, for some reason Sony has decided to create its own competition with the live
action Goosebumps movie, finally hitting theaters after several years of development. In fact
way back in 1998, Frankenweenie's Tim Burton was going to direct! Now to be fair, Goosebumps
has had several release dates, ranging from March 2016 to August 2015 to April 2016 before
settling on what seems like an obvious release date, October 2015. The adult-oriented Crimson
Peak hits theaters the same weekend, while The Last Witch Hunter, Paranormal Activity
The Ghost Dimension and Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse will also be released prior
to Halloween itself. And considering that Halloween is now second only to Christmas
in terms of consumer spending, why shouldn't the Halloween movie become as popular as the
Christmas movie? In fact, it looks like we now have more Halloween movies than Christmas
movies! Perhaps that's because while Santa only comes once a year, you can scare yourself
silly whenever you darn well please. So, is the Goosebumps movie competitive in this overcrowded
slate of movies? Director Rob Letterman and Jack Black didn't have much luck the first
time they teamed up with Gulliver's Travels, but maybe they'll do better the second time
around? Likewise, screenwriters Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski couldn't save the Percy
Jackson franchise when they scripted the sequel, but had solid hits with Agent Cody Banks and
1408, not to mention the very first film they wrote, Problem Child. Scholastic, which publishes
the Goosebumps novels, has their own producer onboard, Deborah Forte, who's working with
Neal H Moritz who produces - get this - the Fast and Furious franchise! But he also produced
RIPD and Jack The Giant Slayer... And then of course there's Goosebumps author RL Stine,
who Black plays in the film and has been called the Stephen King of children's literature.
But Stine has yet to share in King's big screen success, which might be why King is worth
four hundred million and Stine a mere two hundred million. But James Patterson, who
also hasn't had much big screen success, beats them both with a net worth of four hundred
and thirty million! Man, who knew there was so much money in writing scary books...?