Director Leigh Janiak's trilogy of films based on author R.L. Stine's Fear Street series of books is headed to Netflix.
According to Deadline, Netflix has acquired the Fear Street films from Disney, and is currently planning to release all three of them a month apart from one another during the summer of 2021. This will apparently be part of an upcoming event planned by the streaming giant called "The Summer of Fear."
Produced by Chernin Entertainment, Janiak's Fear Street films have already wrapped production. They were originally slated to release theatrically as a part of Chernin's deal with 20th Century Fox -- a deal Chernin broke off after Fox was acquired by The Walt Disney Company. Deadline cites numerous reasons as to why the Fear Street movies will not release in theaters and were sold to Netflix, such as Disney's crowded release schedule and the effect the ongoing coronavirus (COVID-19) has had on cinemas worldwide, as well as the fact that Fear Street's subject matter is scarier than it what is generally expected from the House of Mouse. That being said, neither Netflix, Chernin nor Disney have issued an official statement on the deal.
Fear Street is a series of horror books written by R.L. Stine, which initially ran from 1989 to 1999, before being revived once in 2005 and again in 2014. Similar in nature to Stine's Goosebumps series of books, Fear Street chronicles numerous tales taking place in the fictional town of Shadyside. However, whereas the Goosebumps books are aimed at children and focus on supernatural threats, the Fear Street series is a slightly more violent affair that is directed at teenage readers and puts its focus on murder mysteries (though some supernatural elements are still present).
Of course, R.L. Stine's books are no stranger to live-action adaptations. An popular anthology television series based on the Goosebumps novels ran from 1995 to 1998, with a reboot being announced this past April. A Goosebumps film was released by Sony in 2015, with a stand-alone sequel arriving in 2018. A pilot for a television show based on Fear Street -- titled Ghosts of Fear Street -- aired in 1998, but was ultimately not ordered to series.
Directed by Leigh Janiak, Fear Street stars Kiana Madeira, Olivia Welch, Benjamin Flores Jr., Darrell Britt-Gibson, Ashley Zuckerman, Fred Hechinger, Julia Rehwald, Jeremy Ford and Gillian Jacobs. The first in a trilogy based on R.L. Stine's book series of the same name, the film is slated to stream on Netflix in summer of 2021.