Netflix has released a special featurette ahead of the release of Fear Street Part Three: 1666, which lands on the streaming service on July 16. In anticipation of the final installment of the hit Fear Street trilogy, the featurette brings together the casts from all three films, along with R.L. Stine, the author of the best-selling book series the movies are based on.
Opening on Stine, legendary horror author and father of Goosebumps, the video outlines the history of his book series and how it relates to the three-film Netflix adaptation. Originally published from 1989 to 1999, with two revivals in 2005 and 2014, the Fear Street series has sold over eighty million copies, at one time being listed as the bestselling young-adult book series of all time. Originally, only one street in Shadyside, Ohio was cursed — the titular Fear Street — as opposed to the whole town, as seen in the films. “I’ve killed off a lot of teenagers in Fear Street,” Stine says, looking unsettlingly amused.
Also featured is writer and director Leigh Janiak, whom the original Fear Street series had quite the impact on. Janiak speaks about paying homage to different eras of horror in her trilogy, from the classic Friday the 13th-style slasher film to period horror and ‘fun’ slashers, and how her trilogy encompasses everything that makes horror an exciting genre. “Anything that you could think of,” she says. “Scary, creepy, bloody... it all happens in Fear Street.”
The video then goes on to feature the cast of all three films, breaking down the mythology behind the trilogy: that Shadyside was cursed in the seventeenth century by a vengeful witch who sought to bring pain and destruction to the town for the rest of time, manifesting her wicked spirit into innocent people to force them to commit violent crimes. The trilogy is tied together by a group of young teenagers striving to break the curse, and send Sarah Fier’s spirit back from whence it came.
“People are drawn to Fear Street mainly for the surprises,” says Stine, and that is certainly what this Netflix adaptation has to offer. With no real footage from Part Three: 1666 included in the featurette (at least, none we haven’t seen already), audiences have no idea what to expect from the final third in the trilogy, leaving Janiak and the cast wide open to leave viewers shaking in their shoes.
The Fear Street trilogy is directed by Janiak, who co-wrote the screenplays with Phil Graziadei and Kate Trefry. The trilogy is produced by Janiak, Kori Adelson, Peter Chernin, David Ready, and Jenno Topping. Fear Street Parts One and Two — 1994 and 1978 — are available on Netflix now, and Part Three: 1666 premieres on July 16. Check out the full featurette below: