ONTD Original: 'Are You Afraid of the Dark?' secrets revealed
L-R: Moderator, DJ MacHale, Ron Oliver
At Saturday's Midsummer Scream horror convention in Long Beach, CA, Are You Afraid of the Dark? showrunner/co-creator DJ MacHale and director/writer Ron Oliver reunited to discuss the series.
-The series was originally conceived as bedtime stories for lazy parents, hosted by an elderly famous actor. Eventually focus shifted from bedtime stories to scary stories, and since the concept of an old man telling children scary stories seemed too creepy, the Midnight Society was born.
-DJ MacHale was offered the chance to be showrunner for PBS's Ghostwriter right when AYAOTD was picked up as a series. Preferring to be in charge of a show he had created, he chose the latter.
-A different Midnight Society starred in the original 1990 pilot (The Tale of the Twisted Claw), in which Ross Hull played emo kid David instead of bespectacled 30-year-old virgin Gary.
-Ryan Gosling was the original choice to play David in the Midnight Society, but was under contract to Disney/the Mickey Mouse Club when the show was picked up in 1992. They settled for casting him in an episode years later - Season 5's The Tale of Station 109.1. (Director Ron Oliver would later cast Gosling in the Goosebumps episode, 'Say Cheese and Die')
-Jay Baruchel (The Tale of the Dead Man's Float) was a favorite of the showrunners and thus brought back several more times for the series revival.
-Hayden Christensen's (The Tale of Bigfoot Ridge) acting was so bad that the footage was nearly unusable and required heavy editing to salvage anything. Ron Oliver refused to cast him in Goosebumps because of this.
[Apparently his fellow Goosebumps directors did not care.]
Source: My ghost friend who has a bike.
AYAOTD/'90s YA horror post?