We got to see the first footage of the upcoming film starring Jack Black that lets loose all of R.L. Stine's nightmarish creations!
At Comic-Con on Thursday morning, star Jack Black and director Rob Letterman showed off a reel of footage for the first time anywhere from Goosebumps, the long-awaited big-screen adaptation of R.L. Stine's long-running series of children's books. The Sony Pictures presentation kicked off with a video message from Stine himself, strolling through the set of the movie as he recounts trying to find someone to play him in the film. "I thought maybe I would play myself, but my wife told me I was too old to play myself...so let me introduce my first choice to play me, Jack Black."
Black got a rousing response from the crowd in the Indigo Ballroom and recalled how he went to meet with Stine and get his blessing before playing the role. He then introduced director Rob Letterman and expressed the basic conceit of the meta-themed movie: what if all R.L. Stine's creatures got loose?
Letterman revealed that they just finished shooting two days earlier, but that he does have footage -- albeit unfinished. The movie actually looks like a lot of fun: I haven't read the books but the footage was family entertainment with some decent scares and a ton of monsters -- some of which we saw via practical effects in the footage, others of which were just sketched in with pre-vis images.
We got a better look at those monsters at the end of the panel when about a dozen or so of them -- including the Scarecrow, the Mummy, the Graveyard Ghouls, the Executioner, the Haunted Mask and many more -- shambled onstage to drag Black off at the behest of Slappy the ventriliquist dummy, whom Black had brought onstage earlier for a little "conversation."
That left a bemused Letterman and Slappy (controlled from under the dais) sitting alone, with Slappy taking the opportunity to ask Letterman if he could pitch him some projects. It was a fun way to end what actually turned out to be a fun presentation, and the presence of so many monsters sparked my interest in Goosebumpsto a higher level.
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