If you grew up in the 90s, you surely thrilled to writer R.L. Stine’s tween horror novels.  Stein wrote several series, but the most famous and fondly remembered is ‘Goosebumps,’ which is now getting a cinematic relaunch.  The ‘Goosebumps’ books included such spine-tinglers as ‘Welcome To Dead House’, ‘Stay Out Of The Basement’, ‘Welcome To Camp Nightmare’, ‘The Haunted Mask’ and of course ‘Night Of The Living Mummy’. (*shudder*)  The books were so popular that it spawned an accompanying TV series that adapted these novels into 30 minute live-action episodes. In this new movie, Jack Black plays R.L. Stine himself, who must struggle to return the monsters from his own imagination that are rampaging through their small town, to the pages of his books.  Assisting him are Odeya Rush as Stine’s daughter Hannah (fictitious, Stein only has a son, now an adult named Matthew) and Dylan Minnette as neighbor Zach Cooper.  You can see Black and his young costars below: This movie reunites Black with his ‘Gulliver’s Travels’ director Rob Letterman.  Black spoke a bit about his role:

“I play R.L. Stine, who’s not in any of the books, but he’s an essential character in this movie, which is all about when all of his characters come to life. It was kind of a great way to bring out all of the scary beasts and monsters from all of his books in one movie… this is obviously a fictionalized version of his life and nothing that happens in this movie actually happened to him, other than him writing all the books. So I felt like, I was just going to approach it as a character, doing what I thought was most dramatically interesting and right for what was needed…I made [the character] more of a sort of curmudgeonly dark, brooding beast master. So from the very beginning, I was taking liberties. I think (the real Stine)’s cool with it though… He saw what I was doing and he was digging it. Or at least he pretended like he was digging it.”

Just in case you were curious, here’s a picture of the real Stine: You’ll be seeing more of him, as Black also let the cat out of the bag that Stein will put in an appearance in the movie, “He’s been on set and he actually did a little cameo.” Just how scary will the movie be?  If that damn Dummy’s in it, VERY.  But Black said “Satan [doesn’t come] out and bites your genitals off… Kids still like to get a little thrill and a little danger, so you need projects like this.” Are you excited to see the horrifying ‘Goosebumps’ characters brought to life on the big screen? Source: Cinema Blend