The project was unveiled last month with It writer Gary Dauberman hired to write the script. Matt Kaplan is producing along with Dauberman. Paramount is producing the film conjunction with Nickelodeon Movies.
Are You Afraid of the Dark? was created by D.J. MacHale and Ned Kandel and ran as an anthology series on Nickelodeon between 1992 and 1996. It was set around a group of teenagers who called themselves the Midnight Society and would meet weekly at a secret location in the woods to tell a scary story around a campfire. Subjects ranged from abandoned houses and vampires to scary clowns and witches. The show was revived in 1999 for two more seasons with new writers and showrunners. Tia and Tamera Mowry, Will Friedle, Neve Campbell, Hayden Christensen, Jay Baruchel, Tatyana Ali, Melissa Joan Hart, Jewel Staite, and two-time Academy Award nominee Ryan Gosling are just a few of the household names that lent their acting skills to the anthology.
Each episode was introduced with the storyteller saying “Submitted for the approval of the Midnight Society” and then announce the title of that segment. MacHale said that the line was a tribute to the series The Twilight Zone, in which creator Rod Serling would introduce the episode by saying, “submitted for your approval.”
"The show is about the shared experience of telling stories — especially scary ones. We're going to celebrate that with this movie and honor the darker, scarier tone of the show, which was really groundbreaking for Nickelodeon at the time. I hope the Midnight Society approves," Dauberman told The Hollywood Reporter last month.
Paramount Players is a new division at Paramount Pictures that is led by Awesomeness founder Brian Robbins and focuses on contemporary talent and properties for young audiences while drawing upon the vast resources of the Viacom brands. Nickelodeon is one of those Viacom brands and is already developing a live-action Dora the Explorer movie, based on Nickelodeon's hit animated preschool series, through Paramount Players with Michael Bay’s Platinum Dunes producing.
Update:
Matt Kaplan is leaving Awesomeness after two years helming its film division to establish his own production company, ACE Entertainment, that will focus on making films, television series and digital content for youth audiences, reports The Hollywood Reporter.
Through this new shingle, Kaplan has signed a first-look deal for film with Paramount Players, the six-month-old production division run by Brian Robbins. The deal reunites Kaplan with Robbins, the founder and CEO of Awesomeness who departed the company in February.
Kaplan tells THR that ACE partnered with Paramount Players in part because of the companies' shared focus. "I had an incredible run with Brian at Awesomeness and I wanted to continue to make films specifically for a demo that's targeted to millennial and Gen Z as Brian and I had been doing," he says, adding that the goal is to make between six and eight films each year.
ACE Entertainment has set up offices on the Paramount lot and one of Kaplan's first projects with the studio will be producing the previously announced Are You Afraid of the Dark movie reboot.
"Matt is a talented and creative executive and producer," Robbins said in a statement. "He and I enjoyed a successful partnership at Awesomeness making modestly budgeted films for targeted audiences. I'm excited to continue our relationship here at Paramount Players."
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Originally posted: Wednesday, December 06, 2017.
Sources: Variety, Deadline, Coming Soon, Tubefilter.
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