{"id":614426,"date":"2026-04-30T02:43:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-30T02:43:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/614426\/"},"modified":"2026-04-30T02:43:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-30T02:43:08","slug":"steven-spielberg-is-trying-to-resurrect-casper-the-friendly-ghost-at-disney","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/614426\/","title":{"rendered":"Steven Spielberg is trying to resurrect Casper The Friendly Ghost at Disney+"},"content":{"rendered":"

In what has, sadly,\u00a0not\u00a0turned out to be an adaptation of our beloved fanfic What We Think It\u2019d Be Like If You Managed To Get Casper The Friendly Ghost\u2019s Skin And Bones Back In Him,\u00a0Deadline\u00a0is reporting<\/a> that Steven Spielberg is taking a shot at bringing the classic comic character back to \u201clife.\u201d Specifically, Spielberg (who served as an executive producer on the 1995 film version of the franchise) is working with Goosebumps\u00a0producers Rob Letterman and Hilary Winston on a new live-action version of the character, to star in a Disney+ streaming TV show.<\/p>\n

You\u2019d be right in thinking that no one\u2019s done much with Casper in a hot minute; the film (directed by Brad Silberling and starring Christina Ricci and the voice of Malachi Pearson) kicked off a little sub-franchise of TV shows and direct-to-video films in the \u201990s, but the last time the amicable wraith had a regular presence on TV was in 2012, with Canadian animated series Casper\u2019s Scare School. He has, in other words, missed out on a whole culture shift of taking objectively dorky comic book properties like\u00a0Archie<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Sabrina The Teenage Witch<\/a>\u00a0and trying to make something cooler and darker with them, but never fear:\u00a0Deadline\u00a0notes that the new pitch for a\u00a0Casper\u00a0TV series may intend to\u00a0Wednesday<\/a>\u00a0the character up.<\/p>\n

Letterman and Winston are the main creative architects here, with the pair writing the new series, while Letterman is set to direct. (Spielberg will be an executive producer, presumably because he still has the rights.) The project landed at Disney+ after what\u2019s being described as a \u201cvery competitive\u201d five-way bidding war; the next time studio executives try to present themselves as serious people, remind yourself that their jobs involve figuring out how many millions of dollars to pay for a grimdark version of\u00a0Casper The Friendly Ghost. The series is now under a \u201cpremium development deal\u201d and is being produced at Universal Studio Group.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In what has, sadly,\u00a0not\u00a0turned out to be an adaptation of our beloved fanfic What We Think It\u2019d Be…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":614427,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[88,206],"class_list":["post-614426","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/614426","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=614426"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/614426\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/614427"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=614426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=614426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=614426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}