If you spent the '90s reading R.L. Stine paperbacks under the covers with a flashlight, Tubi would like a word.
The free streamer has gone from one Halloween experiment to a full Stine slate. R.L. Stine's Pumpkinhead 2 hit Tubi on October 9. R.L. Stine's Afraid of Clowns is coming in 2027, and so is R.L. Stine's The Babysitter, which Tubi announced at New York Comic Con earlier this month.
There's also a plan tying it all together.
Speaking with The Hollywood Reporter, Tubi's VP of original scripted content Josh Van Houdt and writer-director Jem Garrard laid out where the franchise is headed. The short version: it's getting bigger, it's getting connected, more Point Horror could be on the way, and Garrard is stepping into a role that looks a lot like a TV showrunner.
It all started with a three-picture deal between Tubi and Front Street Pictures, the company behind the anthology series R.L. Stine's The Haunting Hour. That deal produced Pumpkinhead in October 2025, this month's sequel, and Afraid of Clowns.
Van Houdt says the first movie spent two weeks in Luminate's top 10 for original streaming movies. That's a strong showing for a free, ad-supported service, and it's the reason we got a sequel.
He also explained why Stine fits Tubi so well. Parents over 40 grew up on his books, and their kids are finding him now. As Van Houdt put it, "R.L. Stine's a brand himself."
My favorite detail from the interview is about the rating. Standards and practices told the team, "You can do vegetable gore, but not regular gore." That's how you land at TV-14 instead of TV-PG.
Somewhere, a pumpkin is filing a complaint.
Instead of cranking out numbered sequels forever, the filmmakers are building around Redhaven, the town introduced in the first Pumpkinhead. Garrard summed up the idea: "let's use Redhaven as this town where these weird things happen."
Stine fans know this formula. Fear Street got decades of mileage out of one cursed street in Shadyside.
Pumpkinhead 2 brings back Sam and Becka (Bean Reid and Adeline Lo) as a new curse threatens the whole town. It also adds a genuine horror icon: Cassandra Peterson, aka Elvira, as Cassandra, a witch tied to Redhaven's history.
Garrard reworked the part after Peterson signed on and would love to bring her back in a future film. Nothing is confirmed, but the door is open.
The sequel's ending also points straight at what's next.
Afraid of Clowns, based on a story from Stine's 1999 Nightmare Hour collection, rolls a traveling circus led by Ringmaster Rollo into Redhaven. A girl named Frankie learns the troupe may be tied to a child who vanished years ago, and she suspects her little brother is next.
Garrard returns to write and direct with a new cast that includes Jimbo, winner of RuPaul's Drag Race All Stars Season 8. Van Houdt explained the approach: "Afraid of Clowns will have a different cast and a different story, but it's all relevant to each other."
The clowns also don't need October. Garrard designed the movie to work any time of year, which fits Tubi's bigger horror push. In September, Tubi turned its Terror on Tubi hub into a permanent, year-round destination and said viewers stream more than 53 million hours of horror on the service every month.
Then there's the one that will hit hardest for a certain generation of readers.
The Babysitter adapts Stine's 1989 novel from Scholastic's Point Horror line. Sixteen-year-old Jenny takes a babysitting job to pay for a writing program, even though a prowler has been terrorizing girls in town. Then the phone calls start.
No curse, no monster. Just a teenager alone in somebody else's house with a phone that won't stop ringing.
Stine nailed why it works: "She's not in her own home. She's totally vulnerable. It's a perfect horror character, being a babysitter."
Garrard calls it "a completely different thing" and points to the famous opening of When a Stranger Calls as an inspiration. If you've seen that first act, you know that's exactly the right movie to learn from.
Garrard wrote the script and is executive producing, while Trevor Calverley directs. That's where the showrunner comparison comes in. Directing less, Garrard told THR, frees up time to develop more of these movies, the way a TV showrunner oversees a season without directing every episode.
There's no cast or premiere date yet, and The Babysitter has no announced connection to Redhaven. It's being developed as a standalone. But Stine wrote four Babysitter books, and Garrard says more could follow if audiences show up.
Stine has written more than 300 books, but Hollywood has mostly drawn from two wells: Goosebumps and Fear Street.
Tubi is digging into everything in between. The Haunting Hour, Nightmare Hour, and now the Point Horror paperbacks that once filled Scholastic book fairs.
And Tubi isn't done. Van Houdt and Garrard told THR that more adaptations from Stine's library are under consideration, including more titles from the Point Horror line.
They haven't said which books are in the running, and nothing beyond Afraid of Clowns and The Babysitter has a confirmed production commitment. But Stine's Point Horror shelf alone includes Blind Date, Twisted and Beach Party, so there's no shortage of material.
A year ago, Tubi had one Pumpkinhead movie. Now it has a haunted town, a witch, a killer circus and a babysitter with a very bad night ahead of her. For Stine fans, that's a pretty good haul.
So which R.L. Stine book would you want Tubi to adapt next? Sound off below.