D+ Series Round-up: New ‘Goosebumps’ Live-Action Show, ‘National Treasure’ and ‘American Born Chinese’ Fill Their Casts
D+ keeps expanding its slate of original series with National Treasure, Destin Daniel Cretton’s American Born Chinese, and a brand-new Goosebumps show!
There’s a lot of going on in the House of the Mouse right now, especially when it comes to Disney Plus and its long-term plans for original programming. As big as Marvel, Star Wars, Disney Animation, and Pixar are, variety is the key to success in the streaming wars, and it appears the company is getting ready to ramp up their output of “secondary” projects for the platform.
First up, word is that a new Goosebumps series has been picked up by Disney Plus. The surprising news arrived last Friday via Variety, who claim Sony (who owns the IP) is producing in collaboration with Disney. This isn’t the first deal between the companies, as Sony isn’t aiming to create yet another streaming platform, and so far is doing fine by simply teaming up with Disney. The series, which has been given a 10-episode order for the first season, already has an official synopsis that reads as follows:
The series follows a group of five high schoolers who unleash supernatural forces upon their town and must all work together – thanks to and in spite of their friendships, rivalries, and pasts with each other – in order to save it, learning much about their own parents’ teenage secrets in the process.
Nick Stoller and Rob Letterman (who directed 2015’s Goosebumps film) serve as writers and executive producers on the show, with Stoller executive producing via Stoller Global Solutions. Letterman will also direct the first episode. Neal H. Moritz and Pavun Shetty of Original Film, Conor Welch of Stoller Global Solutions, and Iole Lucchese and Caitlin Friedman of Scholastic Entertainment are also executive producing.
Secondly, the National Treasure series/reboot of sorts keeps filling its cast. Deadline has reported that Hollywood legend Catherine Zeta-Jones is boarding the project as Billie, “a badass billionaire, black-market antiquities expert, and treasure hunter who lives by her own code.” Now that sounds like a villain description. She joins series regulars Lyndon Smith, Zuri Reed, Jake Austin Walker, Antonio Cipriano, and Jordan Rodrigues. Meanwhile, Zeta-Jones is also playing the iconic role of Morticia Addams in Netflix’s Wednesday.
The pilot episode of National Treasure is written by Marianne and Cormac Wibberley (G-Force), and will be directed by Mira Nair (A Suitable Boy). Jerry Bruckheimer, the Wibberleys, Jonathan Littman, KristieAnne Reed, Nair, and Jon Turteltaub (original National Treasure films) executive produce the series alongside Rick Muirragui, who also serves as a writer. Production is set to begin this month in Baton Rouge.
Finally, Michelle Yeoh has been recruited for yet another big project, and we’re losing count at this point. It appears that Star Trek: Discovery was a resurgence of sorts for her, and she’s now non-stop taking on sizable roles both on film and television. In this occasion, she’s re-teaming with Shang-Chi director Destin Daniel Cretton, who recently signed an overall deal with Marvel Studios and Hulu’s Onyx Collective, for American Born Chinese, a genre-hopping action comedy adapted from Gene Luen Yang’s graphic novel. Here’s the synopsis:
The series focuses on Jin Wang, an average teenager juggling his high school social life with his home life. When he meets a new foreign student on the first day of the school year, even more worlds collide as Jin unwittingly is entangled in a battle of Chinese mythological gods. The action-packed coming-of-age adventure explores identity, culture and family.
Emmy-winning writer-producer Kelvin Yu (Bob’s Burgers, Central Park) serves as EP and showrunner, and is joined by Cretton (who also directs), Melvin Mar, Jake Kasdan, Erin O’Malley, Asher Goldstein, and Gene Luen Yang. Yeoh will star alongside Ben Wang (MacGyver), Yeo Yann Yann (Wet Season), Chin Han (Mortal Kombat), Daniel Wu (Reminiscence), Ke Huy Quan (Finding Ohana), former Taekwondo champion Jim Liu, and Sydney Taylor (Just Add Magic).
Francisco J. Ruiz is that guy who has watched Jurassic Park a thousand times and loves Star Wars. His hunger for movies is only matched by his love for video games. He graduated in English Studies from the University of Malaga, in Spain. As he keeps writing about what he enjoys (and doesn’t) for websites all over, he’s continuing his studies.
