Disney+ has ordered a horror anthology series for its streaming lineup… albeit nothing existentially-bleak like Black Mirror or even conventionally-nightmarish like Creepshow—after all, this is a Disney platform. Thus, subscribers will eventually be treated to Just Beyond, an adaptation of the comedic-horror graphic novels from iconic Goosebumps creator R.L. Stine.
Just Beyond will manifest on Disney+ as an 8-episode anthology series, placed under the creative purview of writer and executive producer Seth Grahame-Smith. A perennial player in the world of subversive (adult-aimed) horror, Grahame-Smith will be joined by executive producer David Katzenberg and an assembling writers room to adapt Stine’s four-volume middle-grade anthological graphic novel series, which features artwork from Kelly & Nichole Matthews, published by BOOM! Studios.
As Grahame-Smith lauds of the Just Beyond gig in a statement:
As Stine himself enthusiastically chimes in, recollecting his previous Disney collaboration:
Indeed, Stine has a lot for which to be enthusiastic these days, seeing as his multi-movie-adapted mothership franchise, Goosebumps, was recently ordered as a revival series over at Sony Pictures Television. Plus, the long-mooted movie trilogy based on his Fear Street novels are, by most accounts, still moving forward, and he’s working on a book series based on classic 1980s parody trading card pop culture phenomenon Garbage Pail Kids. Thus, Just Beyond is merely the Mouse House-facilitated icing on a literary empire cake already worth billions.
With Grahame-Smith in the creative driver’s seat for Just Beyond, the series gets the scribe who wrote Tim Burton’s 2012 Dark Shadows reboot movie, and parlayed his bestselling novels Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter and Pride & Prejudice and Zombies into screenplays, released in 2012 and 2016, respectively. He also ventured beyond his genre to co-write—amongst four other credited scribes—the 2017 animated spinoff feature, The Lego Batman Movie. Moreover, he’s spent the past few years teasing his apparent attachment to a Beetlejuice sequel script, which—should it ever get off the ground—would serve as a reunion with Burton.
Regardless, Just Beyond is yet another recent addition to the Disney+ scripted backlog (the most recent of which was Nat Geo’s The Right Stuff series), clearly designed to expand the platform’s topical diversity beyond its signature mega-hit in Star Wars spinoff The Mandalorian. – Not that anything with Baby Yoda is particularly lacking, anyway.
