R.L. Stine Talks About Being Played by Jack Black in the Goosebumps Movie

Posted on September 2, 2014

R.L. Stine has been scaring kids and young adults for decades and at the age of 70 his career is hotter than ever. The Goosebumps movie is finally going to happen and it sounds like great fun.

Stine (played by Jack Black) is the lead character in the film: he's a writer who has retired and is pretty grumpy because all the characters from his books have escaped and are terrorizing the town of Greendale, Maryland. He is approached by his niece and her friend who tell him he must write another book that will solve the problem. The film will hit theaters in 2015.

Stine told Entertainment Weekly that Jack Black flew to meet him in the middle of a blizzard before shooting on the film commenced. They got on like gangbusters, according to Stine who gets a small cameo in the film. He even gets a line of dialogue.

But the movie is just the tip of the iceberg. Stine is also returning to his YA series Fear Street after twenty years. The series begins again with Party Games which will be published by St. Martin's Press on September 30, 2014. He'll write six more books in the series.

Today the Blu-ray/DVD of the new film Mostly Ghostly: Have You Met My Ghoulfriend? was released. In January MTV will premiere Eye Candy starring Victoria Justice. The show is based on his bestselling adult novel. Justice stars as tech genius Lindy who investigates a case of cyber stalking that leads to a serial killer in Manhattan.

At Thrillerfest this summer Stine talked about all his new projects and why he likes social media so much. He is very active on Twitter, but says kids are not on Twitter at all. It's all people in their 20s and 30s and he loves to catch up with former readers from the 1990s. He was one of the only children's writers at Thrillerfest and said everyone is always really nice to him. He says most industries are not so nice. But in his experience writers, generally, are very generous and nice to each other. Take a look: