R.L. Stine's 'Mostly Ghostly: Have You Met My Ghoulfriend?' Available on DVD and Blu-Ray This September

A new family adventure from Universal Studios Home Entertainment and "Goosebumps" creator, R.L. Stine is coming to DVD and Blu-Ray™ combo pack with DVD, Digital HD & Ultraviolet™ on September 2, 2014. Stine's "Mostly Ghostly: Have You Met My Ghoulfriend?" will also be available on digital HD on August 19.

Here is the description from the press release and the trailer courtesy of Universal:

Bella Thorne (Shake It Up!, Gook Luck Charlie), Madison Pettis (Lab Rats, Beverly Hills Chihuahua 3) and Ryan Ochoa (Pair of Kings, The Perfect Game) lead an ensemble cast in this spooktacular adventure with new ghosts, new thrills, and the return of some old friends. Max (Ryan Ochoa) only has eyes for Cammy (Bella Thorne), the smart, popular redhead at school. When Max finally scores a date with Cammy on Halloween, Phears, an evil ghost with plans on taking over the world, unleashes his ghouls and things go haywire. With the help of his ghostly pals, Tara and Nicky, can Max thwart Phears’ evil plot, help reunite his ghost friends with their long-lost parents and still make his date with Cammy on Halloween? R.L. Stein's Mostly Ghostly: Have You Met My Ghoulfriend? is frightful family fun!



-Larissa Mrykalo

New Release Date and Cast Members for 'Goosebumps' Film

Simons and Lund, courtesy IMDB.com

According to The Wrap, the "Goosebumps" movie has just added Timothy Simons ("Veep") and Amanda Lund ("Ghost Ghirls") to the cast. The duo will be joining Jack Black in a spin on the R.L. Stine series as a pair of bumbling police officers, whose ineptitude reaches an all time high when their town is overtaken by storybook monsters come to life.

The movie follows teenaged Zach Cooper and his family as they move to the small town of Greendale, Maryland. His neighbor turns out to be none other then author R.L. Stine. Things quickly turn spooky when the demonic dummy, Slappy, unleashes the villains from the "Goosebumps" books into the real world! Zach, Stine's niece Hannah and the man behind the pen himself have to team up and get the baddies back in their books before they completely take over.

Directed by Rob Letterman, the film will now be released on August 7, 2015. Filming is currently underway in Georgia and Los Angeles.

-Nowal Massari

Details Revealed on the 'Goosebumps' Movie

Image Courtesy Cinema Blend

Readers beware, you're in for a scare! Fans of the YA horror anthology are getting an early Halloween treat, as details of the upcoming "Goosebumps" movie have been revealed. The plot has been outlined in a press release, and it sounds absolutely (and delightfully) crazy!

In Goosebumps, upset about moving from a big city to a small town, teenager Zach Cooper (Dylan Minnette) finds a silver lining when he meets the beautiful girl, Hannah (Odeya Rush), living right next door. But every silver lining has a cloud, and Zach's comes when he learns that Hannah has a mysterious dad who is revealed to be R. L. Stine (Jack Black), the author of the bestselling Goosebumps series. It turns out that there is a reason why Stine is so strange… he is a prisoner of his own imagination – the monsters that his books made famous are real, and Stine protects his readers by keeping them locked up in their books. When Zach unintentionally unleashes the monsters from their manuscripts and they begin to terrorize the town, it's suddenly up to Stine, Zach, and Hannah to get all of them back in the books where they belong.

The meta-plotted movie will be directed by Rob Letterman, with a screenplay by Darren Lemke and Mike White, and a story by "1408" scribes Lemke, Larry Karaszewski and Scott Alexander. Filming began earlier this week in Georgia (Conyers, Madison and Atlanta) with a release scheduled for March 23, 2016.

-Nowal Massari

R.L. Stine's scary cinema

What three flicks does scribe R.L. Stine recommend for a case of the goosebumps?

Arachnophobia
(1990)
“A movie that’s sort of like what I do. It’s very creepy but also just fun … it’s a really good scary introduction film for kids.”

Let The Right One In
(2008)
“A Scandinavian vampire movie … it’s clever, but has some wit to it.”

Pontypool
(2008)
“A very cheap, very low-budget Canadian black-and-white horror film. It just takes place on one set, a radio station morning show. They start to get calls about horrible things happening in town, and at first they think, ‘Oh yeah, very funny’ … but then ‘they’ start tapping on the walls and are outside, and it’s really happening.”

R.L. Stine's book shelf

 
As a follow-up to our interview with R.L. Stine, creator of Goosebumps, we wanted to provide a list of the author's recent reading list ...

61 Hours: A Reacher Novel
By Lee Child

A Question of Belief: A Commissario Guido Brunetti Mystery
By Donna Leon

Strip
By Thomas Perry

The Hunger Games trilogy
By Suzanne Collins

R.L. Stine on being the man behind the boogie man

R.L. Stine, photo by Dan Nelken

When one enters the lair of a master of fear, it’s reasonable to expect a skeleton, perhaps an evil ventriloquist dummy or even posters of creature feature giants like Bela Lugosi. But probably not a cute little pup.

Yet the “lair” of Robert Lawrence Stine - more famously known as children’s author and Goosebumps creator R.L. Stine - is actually a sunny Upper West Side home in New York City with a gatekeeper in the form of his King Charles Spaniel, Minnie.

Instead of haunting, mauling or tormenting, she yips, licks and cuddles in decidedly non-frightening manner. But to get to Stine in his inviting home office filled with books and memorabilia, one must befriend the Minnie beast, which it turns out isn’t all that difficult if you’re any good at petting.

Stine himself is even less frightening than Minnie. A 67-year-old Columbus, OH, native with a relaxed demeanor who laughs easily and readily shares anecdotes, and earned his other pseudonym of Jovial Bob Stine, he is not what you might expect from a guy who spooked out an entire generation and sold more than 300 million books in the process.