What's The Latest on That Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark Sequel?

In late April of 2020, news broke that a sequel to Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark was in active development with the original crew of director André Øvredal, executive producer Guillermo del Toro, and screenwriters Dan and Kevin Hageman. 

Together, they'd whip up another outing based on the classic anthologies of horror stories written by Alvin Schwartz and macabrely illustrated by Stephen Gamell. Some of those drawings are sometimes scarier than the stories themselves; if you know, you know. In any case, a Scary Stories sequel was inevitable once the first movie (now streaming on Peacock) racked up plenty of favorable reviews and a worldwide gross of $104 million against a modest budget of $25 million.

But by the time a sophomore chapter was announced, the world was dealing with an invisible threat more terrifying than Pale Lady, cheek-dwelling spider babies, and the segmented Jangly Man. We are, of course, referring to the novel coronavirus, which understandably sidelined all Hollywood projects as humanity grappled with a new viral agent in its midst.

Will we ever get a sequel to Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark?

It's hard enough getting a film production off the ground in the best of times. Add a deadly pandemic into the mix, and the characteristically slow entertainment industry grinds to a maddening crawl that would fill even the slowest snail on Earth with pity. In the years since April 2020, Øvredal, del Toro, and the Hageman siblings moved on to other projects like The Last Voyage of the Demeter, the Academy Award-winning Pinocchio, and Star Trek: Prodigy.

And yet the world held its breath and wondered: Would Stella Nicholls (Zoe Colletti) be able to bring her friends back with the aid of Sarah Bellows' magical book? The first Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark ends on an upbeat cliffhanger, but a cliffhanger nonetheless, as Stella, her father (Dean Norris), and Ruth Steinberg (Natalie Ganzhorn) drive off in the hopes of recovering Auggie (Gabriel Rush) and Chuck (Austin Zajur). Tommy Milner (Austin Abrams) can remain in scarecrow form — he was a racist jerk. 

The sequel — which has since moved over to Paramount from Lionsgate — was, as you might expect, significantly stymied by COVID-19 and then the WGA strike. "We have a story. We have a script," Øvredal revealed to IGN while promoting Demeter in August 2023. "We've been working on the script as late as last year and even slightly into this year. The process obviously stopped with the strike — but it's alive, for sure. COVID and then [The Last Voyage of the Demeter] eating up two years of my life certainly put a dent in the progress."

Speaking with Collider (via JoBlo) in July 2024, Kevin Hageman revealed that the project has "stalled," going on to add, "We actually don’t know. We wrote a draft, Guillermo [del Toro] had a story direction of where to take it… We can’t get into it, but we wrote something, and that’s the last we know. We know a lot of people liked it, but we also know that nothing’s happening right now. We’re in the dark with you guys.“

With the young actors getting older, the next installment will — if made — most likely jump forward in time to the mid-to-late 1970s. That opens up all kinds of possibilities for the story, which could once again juxtapose tales of terror with real-world history like Watergate and the end of the Vietnam War.

Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark is now streaming on Peacock.