Scoop up some midnight dust and throw it at the new cast of Nickelodeon’s Are You Afraid Of The Dark? miniseries, which, to be clear, is separate from Paramount’s in-the-wind film adaptation. Gavin, Akiko, Louise, Graham, and Rachel are their names, Deadline reports, and they’ll be played by some familiar faces, including It: Chapter 1's Jeremy Taylor and Always Be My Maybe’s Miya Cich, as well as Sam Ashe Arnold, Tamara Smart, and Lyliana Wray.
Also announced is Rafael Casal of last year’s wonderful Blindspotting, who will play the big bad of the three-episode series’ horror tale. In it, a story about the evil ringmaster of the ominous Carnival Of Doom comes to life, threatening our core gang of storytellers. The plot isn’t unlike that of the upcoming Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark adaptation, which also finds kids haunted by horror stories made manifest. Do these people realizing they’re scaring an entire generation away from the joys of storytelling? Or are they simply commenting on the realities of our post-truth era, in which truth exists only in the mind of the consumer? Actually, it’s just a spooky show for children and we’d rather them watch that than whatever the hell is on YouTube.
Dean Israelite, who directed the underrated 2017 Power Rangers movie, helms this project, which features a script by BenDavid Grabinski. As for the movie, it was pulled from Paramount’s release schedule after the departure of writer Gary Dauberman. It’s unclear if that project is still happening, but Deadline sounds optimistic about it. The series, meanwhile, is slated for an October premiere. Until then, pleasant dreams everybody.