‘Fear Street:’ How Netflix’s Horror Trilogy Survived the Disney-Fox Merger and Embraced a Risky Release Strategy

Director Leigh Janiak had come aboard the “Fear Street” franchise with an ambitious plan to release three teen slasher horror movies in a short window. But while she was in production, something ominous was looming just over her shoulder: the Disney-Fox merger. “We knew it was there on the horizon, from even when I was starting to write the scripts, the industry is starting to whisper, this thing is coming,” Janiak told TheWrap. “Winter is coming!” Turns out there was reason to wonder, as Janiak’s story of getting the “Fear Street” movies to the screen has been an epic saga involving a change of studios, uncertain release plans and a little worldwide pandemic. And while the trilogy of films ended up at Netflix, even the streaming giant took a different approach to releasing it — rolling it out one weekly movie at a time, starting this week. Coming off her debut movie “Honeymoon,” an indie horror film Janiak directed in 2014, Janiak was tapped by Chernin Entertainment in 2017 to tackle a film adaptation of “Fear Street,” a series of horror books by “Goosebumps” author R.L. Stine. She wasn’t just given the keys to a studio movie, but an entire...

Read original story ‘Fear Street:’ How Netflix’s Horror Trilogy Survived the Disney-Fox Merger and Embraced a Risky Release Strategy At TheWrap