Guillermo del Toro brings childhood nightmares to life as progress is made on a classic book of scary stories.
News broke that the acclaimed intense director will be taking up the classic Scary Stories to Tell In The Dark, which had the inner child in everyone cheering. The novels were written by Alvin Schwartz and illustrated by Stephen Gammell and were released in 1981, 1984, and 1991, but steadily gained a popularity that stood the test of time. The books were constantly circulated through out school libraries that it was only a matter of time before someone had looked into the serious cinematic potential of the novels.
Del Toro is a busy man in Hollywood, so when news broke that he had stepped away from directing Pacific Rim 2, it was collectively understood, and however news about other projects was still hushed. The director has been taking steps away from bigger productions as of recently and it is rumored that the reason behind this is due to his focus on the smaller production based on the novels. After much silence the project has finally gained a bit more steam in terms of production.
The dynamic duo writers of the successful LEGO movie, Dan and Kevin Hageman, will be joining del Toro. The film already had an adaption script, however the brothers have joined the team to fix and finish the script. The earlier version of the script was written by Marcus Dunstan and Patrick Melton and before that John August wrote a script for the director but none of those were finalized.
The writers had previously worked with the director on Trollhunters, a Netflix series adapted from the director’s co-written YA novel series. In fact after the fact the director only had praises for the brothers, “I have had such a great time working with the Hagemans on Trollhunters — and they have proven to be such brilliant writers — that the fit for this material was just perfect: They grew up with the books, they love the genre, and they are smart and emotional when writing characters”. From this praise grew a mutual appreciation that has led to the director selecting the brothers for this novel adaptation as well.
There hasn’t been any news of a set schedule for the CBS films production, but until then let the excitement build that a childhood dream (or nightmare) may honestly come to life now.
