Columbia Pictures has acquired rights from Scholastic Media to bring R.L. Stine’s Goosebumps, the second-best-selling kids book series in the world, to the big screen . Even though the series of children’s horror novels have sold 300 million books, an achievement only rivaled by Scholastic’s “Harry Potter” series, Goosebumps has never seen the big screen before. There was a video game, and a live-action television series on Fox Kids Network in the ’90s, but no movie. But that is all about to change now that Scholastic’s Deborah Forte and Sony’s Neal Moritz are both producing the films via his Sony-based Original Film banner. Read for more information.

Sixty-two Goosebumps books were published from 1992 to 1997. The America Library Association lists the Goosebumps series as number 15 in it’s list of the most challenged books from 1990 to 1999. Even though they were geared towards the 12 and under crowd, many felt that they were too violent or scary for that age group. But in this day and age of PG-13 horror, and the money it rakes in, it is about time someone finally decided to try and deliver a semi-original horror franchise marketed towards the early teens. As stated on some other blog, at least this may keep some of these people from taking our classic “R” horror and then neutering them for today’s younger audience, right?

“Numerous people have tried to bring ‘Goosebumps’ to the bigscreen, but luckily Scholastic never found the right fit,” said Moritz. “I’ve been a huge fan of the property for a long time. I met with Deborah several times and convinced her that Original and Sony were the best place to take it.”

I guess that really translates into the fact that Sony gave them a shitload of money. Moritz and company are now actively looking for actors, writers, and directors. Moritz also stated that he would like to cast unknown child actors and have more well-knowns in supporting roles in the same way as the Harry Potter films. It looks as if they would like to turn this into an on-going franchise, which makes a lot of sense. I was a bit too old for the books, so I never read them. I was getting high and getting laid and all that stuff, so reading about Slappy the Dummy were a bit low on my priorities back then. But I do remember the live-action show. Not because I watched Fox Kids by choice, but because my getting high and getting laid to me getting a son, who at a young age, seemed to enjoy the show. And besides, if I was going to watch some Fox Kids crap back in the mid ’90s, it might as well be horror based.