A Chilling Jack Black Movie Is Streaming For Free
Jack Black is one of the most beloved actors in the world, and he has captivated audiences plenty with his performances, but one of his most chilling movies is streaming for free.
For thirty years, children of all ages have fallen in love with a book series that has gone on to international acclaim. Goosebumps, the horror fiction novels created and written by R.L. Stine, have become the go-to books for kids learning to read and wanting something a little more spine-tingling to rival that of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series. The 78-year-old Stine has gone on to become one of the most prolific writers of the last few decades, with more than 400 million copies of his work sold worldwide. The Goosebumps books were made into a theatrical feature film in 2015 that starred Jack Black, and now that movie is streaming for free so that families can enjoy the scary tales derived from the mind of R.L. Stine.
According to JustWatch, Goosebumps is currently streaming for free on Freevee, a no-charge subscription streaming service provided by Amazon. Directed by Rob Letterman of Monsters vs. Aliens and Gulliver’s Travels fame, Goosebumps tells the action-adventure story of R.L. Stine as he works with his daughter and teenage neighbor to save their town from a group of monsters. Jack Black plays a fictionalized version of R.L. Stine, whose creations from the Goosebumps books threaten to destroy Madison, Delaware. Odeya Rush and Dylan Minnette embody Stine’s teenage saviors. At the same time, several actors are featured in supporting roles that includes Academy Award-nominated performer Amy Ryan, Ken Marino, Halston Sage, Steven Krueger, Ryan Lee, and comedian Jillian Bell. The movie was filmed around the Atlanta area in the summer of 2014, similar to many of the projects in production around that same time period.
Based on the popular book series of the same name, Jack Black’s Goosebumps was a modest hit when it was released in 2015. The movie went on to gross over $150 million at the box office against a budget of nearly $80 million. The film was well received by critics and audiences alike, with Rotten Tomatoes currently ranking Goosebumps as Certified Fresh with a 78% on its Tomatometer based on 166 critics’ reviews, while the Audience Score is 62% based on over 50,000 reviews from fans of the site. Similarly, Metacritic rates the movie with a Metascore of 60 and a User Score of 6.7, which typically denotes generally favorable reviews from audiences.
Before it was released in theaters, Goosebumps had quite a long journey to get to audiences. The idea for a filmed version of the book franchise originally came about in the late 1990s with director Tim Burton attached to helm the project. The movie went into development hell for a long time due to script rewrites and the attempts by filmmakers to decide on which one of the Goosebumps books to adapt to the screen. According to Collider, Columbia Pictures ended up acquiring the rights to make a Goosebumps-related movie in 2008, which spring-boarded the project back into development. In the end, Gemini Man screenwriter Darren Lemke wrote the screenplay for what became the Jack Black starring vehicle, with writers Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski taking credit for developing the story for the film. Alexander and Karaszewski have been frequent collaborators with Tim Burton on past films, including Big Eyes and Ed Wood.
The end result is the 2015 classic starring Jack Black that has become a chilling and humorous depiction of a favorite book series. Goosebumps went on to spawn a 2018 sequel entitled Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween, where Jack Black returned but in a much smaller role. He was the only actor from the original cast to appear in the movie’s sequel. The popularity of the initial film provided interest in adapting some of R.L. Stine’s other work, namely the Fear Street books that are geared towards teenagers. The Fear Street Trilogy was released on Netflix in July 2021 as a film series that featured three distinct stories directed by Leigh Janiak. The Fear Street Trilogy was set in three different time periods and starred Kiana Madeira, Olivia Scott Welch, Community actor Gillian Jacobs, Stranger Things stars Sadie Sink and Maya Hawke, and Benjamin Flores Jr. Much darker than Goosebumps, The Fear Street Trilogy is currently available to stream on Netflix, while Goosebumps can be found on Amazon Freevee.
