Disney Releases Surprise Streaming Hit Just In Time For Halloween
Streamer, beware, you’re in for a scare! The new Disney Goosebumps reboot is doing scary good numbers, according to Variety. The site reported recently that Disney’s revival of the horror-lite children’s series brought in 4.2 million views across multiple platforms since it became available to stream on October 13.
Disney’s Goosebumps reboot debuted at the New York Comic Con last Friday before hitting Hulu and Disney+ soon after. Disney is so proud of the viewing numbers on Goosebumps that they are boasting the series was Disney Branded Television’s most-watched season premiere of 2023 and the biggest streaming season premiere on Hulu and Disney+ since 2021’s Monster’s Inc spinoff Monsters at Work.
The new Goosebumps reboot is a massive success for Disney, bringing in over 4 million views in under a week.
Currently, the first five episodes of Goosebumps are available to stream with episode 6—an adaptation of Goosebumps favorite Night of the Living Dummy—coming Friday, October 20.
The new Disney series is an adaptation of the popular Goosebumps books written by tween-horror guru R.L. Stine. Stine’s books have long served as a gateway into the horror genre for kids not quite old enough for Tales from the Crypt or Creepshow. So far, the newest television adaptation of his work looks to be following the same path.
Along with the fresh faces that make up the majority of the show’s cast, Goosebumps also features two Hollywood veterans, Justin Long and Rob Huebel.
Disney’s Goosebumps follows a gang of five high school students who accidentally release a supernatural plague upon their town and now must work together to save it. This latest iteration of Goosebumps follows the trend begun by the 2015 film adaptation in which the monsters from Stine’s books are presented all together in the same reality with a core cast of characters working together to stop them.
This narrative choice is a far cry from both the original books and the ’90s Goosebumps television show, which both present each story as its own thing in its own world, ala The Twilight Zone.
For anyone curious, this new metric used by streamers such as Netflix and Disney to measure the success of their recent projects is determined by dividing a title’s total runtime by total stream time. Therefore, a “view,” as Disney counts it may not be someone actually sitting through an entire episode of Goosebumps but rather tuning in for a fraction of the episode’s total runtime. Streamers have long been cagey about how they measure viewership numbers, often preferring to keep their methods close to the vest.
Disney’s Goosebumps follows a gang of five high school students who accidentally release a supernatural plague upon their town and now must work together to save it.
Disney Branded Television is no doubt happy with the success of Goosebumps so far, especially since their second book-based reboot is scheduled to drop in just a couple of months. A highly-anticipated new adaptation of Percy Jackson & The Olympians is due to launch on Disney+ on Dec. 20, just in time for the holiday season.
The new Disney Goosebumps series was created by Rob Letterman and Nicholas Stoller and stars Zack Morris—no, not the guy from Saved By The Bell—Isa Briones, Miles McKenna, Ana Yi Puig, and Will Price. Along with the fresh faces that make up the majority of the show’s cast, Goosebumps also features two Hollywood veterans, Justin Long and Rob Huebel.
New episodes of Disney’s Goosebumps are available every Friday on Hulu and Disney+.
