Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark was a compelling cavalcade of phobias and monstrosities, but there’s plenty of room for a sequel to up the ante. And it turns out that sequel is still happening, and looking to be even more faithful to the source material.
Talking to Collider, director André Øvredal spoke about the ongoing work on adapting the book series into a second film, emphasising the difficulty of production during the pandemic and the ambitions they’re aiming to meet with the sequel.
“Production-wise we’re in a holding pattern, but not really because we’re just developing the story and the script, which is a time consuming process because there’s no point in making a sequel to that movie unless it’s elevated and it’s great and it’s ideally better than the first movie,” Øvredal said.
Continuing, he explained that one big emphasis in that ongoing development is the world and visual style of the original children’s books, and in particular the haunting, visually striking illustrations by Stephen Gammell. His art work and the inspiration it provided was part of what makes Scary Stories as a series work.
“I learned so much on Scary Stories, but also about Scary Stories and I do think we’ll tap even more into Gammell’s visual world in the sequel than we did in the first movie,” the director said.
If that’s the case, it’s bound to be for the better.