The cutest manifestation of death, Casper the Friendly Ghost, is getting a new live-action series at Disney+. It appears to be in safe hands too, with Steven Spielberg returning as an executive producer. According to Deadline, the news comes after a bidding war over the remake.
Rob Letterman and Hilary Winston, who were executive producers on the recent Goosebumps series, are leading the project, which is currently in the early stages of development. Deadline added the show could have a darker take on the character than the 1995 movie Casper, which starred Christina Ricci and Devon Sawa.
Casper the Friendly Ghost himself has actually been around since 1945, and has appeared in numerous animations, comics and TV shows since. In 2022 there was word that a Casper live action TV series – penned by Hannibal, The Flash and The Ghost Bride writer Kai Yu Wu – was in development at Peacock, but never made it to air.
The 1995 Casper did well at the box office and gave a generation of women a lifelong obsession with Sawa, who played the IRL version of the ghost boy. There was a screenplay for a sequel written, but the project was abandoned.
Rachel Weber is the Head of Editorial Development at IGN and an elder millennial. She’s been a professional nerd since 2006 when she got her start on Official PlayStation Magazine in the UK, and has since worked for GamesIndustry.Biz, Rolling Stone and GamesRadar. She loves horror, horror movies, horror games, Red Dead Redemption 2, and her Love and Deepspace boyfriends.
