If anyone was wondering how easy it is to convince Nice Guys writer/director Shane Black to extend one of his franchises into the future, the answer for one '80s hit is pretty damn easy.

The staff at IGN took a shot at convincing Black to revisit one of his earliest screenplays for a modern sequel: namely the cult 1987 kids horror movie The Monster Squad. Conceived with director Fred Dekker before Lethal Weapon took Black's career to another level, the story of suburban pre-teens taking on the ultimate gallery of Universal movie monsters has only grown its legend in the nearly three decades since its release.

"The cult surprised [me]" the writer said of the movie's reputation. "I didn't even realise it had been successful. I loved it, I had fun working on it and it was one of the first things I'd ever written. And it wasn't just that it wasn't a hit - it was a huge failure. No one saw it. I don't know how on earth it caught on years later."

As for the story, care would need to be taken to differentiate a Squad sequel from one of the other well know stories of grown kids taking on their childhood tormentors. "When you say the kids are grown-up the first thing I go to is the movie, or the book really, It by Stephen King, which is about kids who fight monsters when they're young, then as grown-ups they're sort of beckoned and they have to return to their childhood hometown. And I think that's kind of close to what you're saying in a way. I don't know how you would distance yourself from that.

"It would be interesting to have two movies - one The Monster Squad, and one The Monster Squad and they're 30 years apart and so are the kids; the characters have aged. As long as people understood that's what we're doing, I think that could be fun. That's a good idea!"

In an era where Stranger Things is an unexpected hit, well, stranger things have happened.