TV
Disney+ “Goosebumps” Series Renewed for Season 2 With New Cast and New Setting!
Last year’s R.L. Stine-based Disney+ series “Goosebumps” will return for Season 2, we’ve learned this weekend, but the cast and setting will be switched up this time around.
Variety reports, “The announcement was made during the Disney Branded Television presentation at the Television Critics Association winter press tour. As part of the announcement, it was also revealed that the second season would be eight episodes compared to the 10-episode first season, and that the show is going the anthology route. Thus, Season 2 will feature an entirely new cast and setting based on R.L. Stine’s iconic Scholastic book series.”
“Audiences everywhere fell in love with the series’ chills, thrills, heart and humor, making it one of Disney Branded Television’s most-watched shows of last year,” said Ayo Davis, president of Disney Branded Television. “We can’t wait to dive deeper into the brilliant mind of R.L. Stine, and to collaborate once again with Sony Pictures Television, Scholastic Entertainment, and our fantastic creative team to bring an entirely new mystery to Disney+ for season two.”
Here’s the official synopsis for “Goosebumps” Season 2: “Teenage siblings discover a threat within their home, setting off a chain of events that unravel a profound mystery. As they delve into the unknown, the duo find themselves entangled in the story of five teenagers who mysteriously vanished in 1994.”
“We are incredibly proud of the work of our writers, producers, cast and crew and the vision they brought to season one, which a new generation of fans are loving alongside those who grew up in R.L. Stine’s iconic world,” said Katherine Pope, president of Sony Pictures Television Studios. “Like when you cracked open a new book in the ‘Goosebumps’ series, we can’t wait to see how the writers flip the show on its head as we explore the series as an anthology. Thanks to Disney Branded Television, who remain steadfast partners throughout this wonderfully chilling journey.”
Plunging viewers into a world of mystery and suspense, the first season of the new “Goosebumps” series followed a group of five high schoolers as they embark on a shadowy and twisted journey to investigate the tragic passing three decades earlier of a teen named Harold Biddle — while also unearthing dark secrets from their parents’ past.
Nicholas Stoller (“The Muppets”) and Rob Letterman (“Pokémon Detective Pikachu”) developed the series and serve as executive producers, alongside Hilary Winston (“Community”), Neal H. Moritz (“Fast & Furious” franchise”), Scholastic Entertainment’s Iole Lucchese (“Clifford the Big Red Dog”), Pavun Shetty (“The Boys”), Conor Welch (“Platonic”), Scholastic Entertainment’s Caitlin Friedman (“Stillwater”), Erin O’Malley (“New Girl”) and Kevin Murphy (“Desperate Housewives”). James Eagan (“DC’s Legends of Tomorrow”) and Nick Adams (“BoJack Horseman”) serve as co-executive producers.
Published in 2019, Stephen King‘s novel The Institute is getting a TV series adaptation from MGM+, with Deadline reporting today that the project has been given a series order.
Ben Barnes (Shadow and Bone) and Mary-Louise Parker (Weeds) will star.
The Institute comes from director/executive producer Jack Bender (Lost, Mr. Mercedes), writer/executive producer Benjamin Cavell (Justified, The Stand) and MGM+ Studios.
In the eight-episode series, “When 12-year-old genius Luke Ellis is kidnapped, he awakens at The Institute, a facility full of children who all got there the same way he did, and who are all possessed of unusual abilities. In a nearby town, haunted former police officer Tim Jamieson (Barnes) has come looking to start a new life, but the peace and quiet won’t last, as his story and Luke’s are destined to collide.” The website notes that Parker will play “Ms. Sigsby, the charming but iron-willed director of the Institute and a true believer in its awful mission.”
“I’m delighted and excited at the prospect of The Institute, with its high-intensity suspense, being filmed as a series,” King said. “The combination of Jack Bender and Ben Cavell guarantees that the results will be terrific.”
“We are thrilled to have the opportunity to work again with Stephen King. And The Institute, based on his critically acclaimed novel, is an exciting addition to the MGM+ original series slate,” said Michael Wright, head of MGM+. “There is no creative team I would trust more to bring the book to life than Jack and Ben, whose creative vision and love of Mr. King’s voice, will bring this thought-provoking and gut-wrenching story to life, in the engaging, cinematic, and thrilling style MGM+ viewers expect.”
Here’s the novel’s full synopsis, via Amazon:
As psychically terrifying as Firestarter, and with the spectacular kid power of It, The Institute is Stephen King’s gut-wrenchingly dramatic story of good vs. evil in a world where the good guys don’t always win.
In the middle of the night, in a house on a quiet street in suburban Minneapolis, intruders silently murder Luke Ellis’s parents and load him into a black SUV. The operation takes less than two minutes. Luke will wake up at The Institute, in a room that looks just like his own, except there’s no window. And outside his door are other doors, behind which are other kids with special talents—telekinesis and telepathy—who got to this place the same way Luke did: Kalisha, Nick, George, Iris, and ten-year-old Avery Dixon. They are all in Front Half. Others, Luke learns, graduated to Back Half, “like the roach motel,” Kalisha says. “You check in, but you don’t check out.”
In this most sinister of institutions, the director, Mrs. Sigsby, and her staff are ruthlessly dedicated to extracting from these children the force of their extranormal gifts. There are no scruples here. If you go along, you get tokens for the vending machines. If you don’t, punishment is brutal. As each new victim disappears to Back Half, Luke becomes more and more desperate to get out and get help. But no one has ever escaped from the Institute.
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