How Tubi Turns R.L. Stine Into a Streaming Powerhouse

A New Dimension of Fear: Tubi’s Streaming Strategy with R. L. Stine

The ad‑supported streaming service has found a niche in adapting R. L. Stine’s horror books for kids and teens. These works, long turned into films and series, offer fertile ground for content that balances creative chills with family‑friendly appeal.

While developing the „Pumpkinhead” project, director Jem Garrard and Josh Van Houdt, Tubi’s VP of Original Content, had to set limits for this modern retelling of the short story from „The Nightmare Hour.” Their version follows Sam, a shy teen played by Bean Reid, who searches for his missing brother in a town cursed by a malicious pumpkin‑crop spell.

When asked about content limits, the answer was vegetable organs. Van Houdt explains: We had a serious talk about the R. L. Stine brand and whether we’d work with a TV‑14 or TV‑PG rating.

Hollywood’s Long‑Standing Stine Adaptations

When we spoke with S&P and asked what we could show on TV‑14, the preferred answer was: ‘You can make horror out of vegetables, but not blood.’ I said: great, we can have pumpkin organs, but no blood. Horror out of vegetables, then.

Hollywood has constantly adapted Stine’s vast library of over 300 middle‑grade and young‑adult horror titles for three decades. Stine recalls: In the ’90s, when we started the Goosebumps TV series, I was writing a book a month, so I didn’t have time to work on the series. But it was fun to see what other writers could do. They took my story and took it in other directions.

The same thing happened with film adaptations.

From SyFy to Tubi: The Path

From Disney+ and Sony to Warner Bros. and Skydance TV, Stine adaptations have embraced his family‑friendly horror and genre comedy, with a few mature exceptions like MTV’s Eye Candy or Netflix’s Fear Street. Despite the crowded landscape, the FAST channel and its 110 million active monthly users present an opportunity. We have such a large and varied audience, says Van Houdt. I’ve tried to find ways to tie these segments together—mix them and see if we can have content for them that isn’t hard horror if they don’t want it. R. L.

Stine fit perfectly because the brand itself is the hook.

As a long‑time Stine fan, Van Houdt previously worked at SyFy, where he was introduced to Front Street Pictures, the production company behind the 2010 anthology series „The Haunting Hour.” After joining Tubi, he reached out to see if they still held the IP rights, and when they confirmed, they began discussing options, including the potential for another series based on the books. From these talks emerged a deal for three films with the Haunting Hour studio.

The development process focused on „activating the right stories, but also identifying those that could attract the nostalgic audience over 40 who read them, along with their children who are now seeing these things,” says the Tubi manager.

Balancing Nostalgia and Modernity

Within this effort, there was also an opportunity to expand streaming, film, and Stine into a space that had not yet been combined. „When I started talking to Jem about it, I asked: what are our reference points, besides TV series? Films are either fully comedic, like the Goosebumps movie, or animated, like Coraline and Monster House,” notes Van Houdt.

The two returned to „Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark,” along with other ’80s horror titles featuring younger protagonists, such as Gremlins and The Gate. „There’s a lot of ’80s production that feels like what we were trying to do,” adds the manager. „And obviously, Stranger Things is an easy reference, but it wasn’t quite what we were aiming for.”

Although Stine is synonymous with certain ’80s and ’90s elements, Tubi was not interested in creating an era piece.

From Short Story

The ad‑supported streamer, with a larger Gen Z audience, opted for something in between— a place where tube TVs coexist with modern musical references. „There’s never a need for a mobile phone, but if there is, we use a landline. It was very important for us not to look dated, but also to keep that ’90s atmosphere.”

They also wanted to evoke Stine’s spirit, a pendulum of feeling and fear. What makes an R. L. Stine story truly heart‑felt is that it doesn’t talk down to its child characters. It’s never condescending.

His work is truly scary for a child, and it balances fun and adventure so well, says Garrard. That’s the anchor for all our films and where we started with Pumpkinhead.

Success on Tubi

For Stine, the short story from The Nightmare Hour was a logical gateway to adapting his work. I don’t think about movies or television when I write. I just try to write a decent book. But if there’s a good story there, people have a lot to work with. With the short story Pumpkinhead, it’s truly one of my best Halloween stories, so they had a lot when they started adapting it, he says. And my scary stuff isn’t just scary; it’s also funny. There are laughs, twists, surprises.

I think they really understood that.

After its October 2025 launch as part of the „Terror on Tubi” line, Pumpkinhead’s audience hit the exact mix of viewers the platform was looking for. „It stayed in the top 10 on Luminate for two weeks,” says Van Houdt to THR about how the platform evaluated whether its Stine strategy paid off. „We always get things on the Luminate graph, but staying two weeks there is really good for us. Then the feedback. People were thrilled.”