Horror master and childhood nightmare-maker R.L. Stine has another creation heading to the small screen. Tubi’s Pumpkinhead, originally a short story from 1999’s Nightmare Hour, follows a teenager named Sam whose family moves to the seemingly quiet town of Redhaven, only to uncover a sinister harvest curse after his brother Finn mysteriously vanishes, and no one else even remembers he existed.
In 2011, Pumpkinhead was adapted into an episode of R.L. Stine’s The Haunting Hour, expanding the lore and altering the characters while retaining its eerie, gourd-centered curse. Now, Tubi is offering a new version that digs even deeper into the dark mythology and original story, trading in the family-friendly appeal from the first adaptation for something far more scary, spooky, and sinister.
“I always think that the movies should be scarier than the books,” Stine told TV Insider while at New York Comic Con. “I hold back for kids. But in a movie like this, you want it to be scarier. And that’s what they did. They took the basic premise of the story, and then they added a lot of scares.”
Stine then explained the inspiration behind the spooky tale that led him to write the Halloween story nearly three decades ago.
Tubi
“It started out in a very strange way. Usually, my stories start out with a title, and I figure out the story from the title. This one just came from an image. I had this image that flashed into my head, and it was a pumpkin, but it had a kid’s face inside. And I just looked at it and thought, ‘Pumpkinhead, pumpkinhead.’ And that image led me to the entire story about kids being trapped inside pumpkins,” revealed the legendary scribe.
But why now? Why return to this classic short story about a pumpkin patch visit gone wrong 25 years after it first appeared in print?
“I just like to have a movie,” joked Stine. “It’s nice to have a movie, right? I always liked the story. I thought this was one of my better Halloween stories.”
Watch the video for the full interview.
R.L. Stine’s Pumpkinhead, Streaming Now, Tubi
— Additional reporting by Kelli Boyle