Everyone remembers their first scary movie. For most people, it wasn’t even something meant to be a scary movie — maybe it was the Child Catcher in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, or the Skeksis in The Dark Crystal, or the Other Mother in Coraline. But for a big sector of ‘90s kids, their first taste of horror came from Casper, the 1995 movie following Casper the Friendly Ghost in brilliant ‘90s CGI as he copes with his demise, his three mean uncles, and his crush on human girl Kat (Christina Ricci).
It was meant to be a family movie, but it was certainly darker than Casper’s previous cartoon appearances. Now, Casper is coming back, but in an even darker — and even longer — form.
According to Deadline, a Casper live-action series is in development at Disney+. The series comes from the showrunners of yet another ‘90s revival series at the streamer, Goosebumps, and is even executive-produced by Steven Spielberg, who produced the original 1995 movie through his company Amblin Entertainment.
We don’t know much about this series, as it’s so early in the development process, but the report claims it will copy the live-action/CGI hybrid medium of the original movie. It will also reportedly take inspiration from another ‘90s-movie-to-streaming-series project: Wednesday. This is the perfect parallel for Casper, as, like Wednesday, its original source material was a slightly spooky family film starring Christina Ricci in her younger years.
But unlike Wednesday, Casper doesn’t have to worry about aging. While Wednesday is set in a completely new universe with brand-new castings for Wednesday and the rest of the Addams Family, the Casper series could hypothetically serve as a direct sequel to the original movie. So while Wednesday features Christina Ricci herself as a completely different character, she could actually reprise her role of Kat in this show. With Yellowjackets wrapping up soon, her schedule should free up.
Wednesday has always been one of Netflix’s top performers, but that doesn’t necessarily mean another Ricci-based supernatural series is a guaranteed hit. Wednesday also has Tim Burton, horror maven du jour Jenna Ortega, and an all-star cast. Perhaps all you need is a nostalgic property with lasting memories with audiences and a spooky story, but if Casper is really going to use the Wednesday playbook, it’s got to pull out all the stops.
