Alvin Schwartz’s Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark is a much-loved spooky kids anthology book series, and the movie adaptation arrives in August. It’s produced by Guillermo Del Toro, and a new trailer has been released.
The first trailer was released in March didn’t really make it clear how the movie would be presenting the various stories from Schwartz’s book. However, this latest promo reveals that it’s all a single narrative. A bunch of kids visit an old house and find a spooky book, which is filled with terrifying stories that start coming true. It all looks like massive scary fun–check the trailer out above.
Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark is directed by André Øvredal, who previously proved his genre credentials with The Autopsy of Jane Doe and Trollhunter. It stars Zoe Margaret Colletti (Annie), Michael Garza (The Hunger Games: Mockingjay), Gabriel Rush (Moonrise Kingdom), Dean Norris (Breaking Bad), and Lorraine Toussaint (Orange is the New Black). It hits theaters on August 9.
In a recent interview with Vulture, Del Toro explained why the movie had a single narrative rather than making it a collection of stories. “[Anthology] is something I love, but they’re always as bad as the worst story,” he said. “[This is] a Young Adult movie about childhood around a time when things were changing forever, around 1968 and 1969. It’s the end of childhood in many ways, a crucial time for America. We didn’t retrofit the characters to the stories. We adapted the characters to the story.”
The first volume of Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark was published in 1981 and contained 29 stories. It was followed by a second volume in 1984, and a third in 1991.