Following in the footsteps of Goosebumps and Fear Street, fellow children's horror series Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark is coming to the big screen. The rights to the illustrated book that terrified every kid born in the ‘80s and ‘90s have been acquired by CBS Films, which has tapped Saw writers Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan to write the adaptation. Reportedly, Melton and Dunstan will use the folk anthology’s stories (and, hopefully, images) as a jumping-off point for the film, which will concentrate on a “group of kids who band together to save their town from frightening nightmares.” That might sound a little juvenile, but hopefully the twisted weirdoes behind Saw can find a way to keep the whole thing from turning into a movie adaptation of Are You Afraid Of The Dark?. (Not that a movie adaptation of Are You Afraid Of The Dark? would be a bad thing—or unlikely, at this point.)
To date, Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark has sold over 7 million copies. Several sequels have also been published, including More Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark and Scary Stories 3: More Tales To Chill Your Bones. The original Scary Stories also holds the dubious honor of being the most challenged book in American libraries throughout the ‘90s.