Tubi is adapting R.L. Stine’s The Babysitter. Chief Content Officer Adam Lewinson made the announcement as a surprise on Sunday at the “R.L. Stine on Tubi” panel at New York Comic Con, and the live-action film is coming to Tubi in 2027. That makes it the fourth Stine movie in Tubi’s collection, after Pumpkinhead, Pumpkinhead 2 and the still-to-come Afraid of Clowns. The tease is at the top of this page.
Josh Horowitz of Happy Sad Confused moderated. On stage with Stine were writer and director Jem Garrard, Jimbo from the Afraid of Clowns cast, and Lewinson. Before anyone sat down, the panel opened with a video message from Cassandra Peterson, better known as Elvira, who is in Pumpkinhead 2. And Stine delivered the line of the day, per Tubi’s own recap: “I was once described as a training bra for Stephen King.”
The Babysitter
This one goes back to 1989. The Baby-Sitter was one of Stine’s Scholastic teen thrillers, before Goosebumps made him the biggest name in kids’ horror, and it was popular enough to turn into a four-book series that ran into 1995. It’s built on the oldest setup in the genre: a girl, a stranger’s house, a phone that keeps ringing.
Here’s Tubi’s synopsis. Desperate to earn enough money for a prestigious writing program, sixteen-year-old Jenny takes a babysitting job despite a prowler terrorizing girls across town. When threatening phone calls begin and a dangerous fugitive surfaces in town, Jenny grows suspicious of everyone around her as the danger begins closing in.
Trevor Calverley directs from a script by Jem Garrard, who wrote and directed both Pumpkinhead films and Afraid of Clowns. Blue Ice is producing. The executive producers are Lance Samuels, Joan Waricha, Jane Stine and Garrard, and the producers are Dan Bernard, Yvonne Bernard, Tebogo Maila, Darren Cameron and Adam Friedlander. No cast has been announced yet.
The first clip from Afraid of Clowns
The panel had a plant. Partway through the Q&A, Kaptain Krazee interrupted to roll the first clip from R.L. Stine’s Afraid of Clowns. In it, Ringmaster Rollo, played by Jimbo, scares a lost child with a troupe of clowns. Jimbo won RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars season 8 and came up through Canada’s Drag Race, so a ringmaster is a natural fit. The clip was shown in the room only. Tubi hasn’t put it online.
Tubi first announced the film on October 1. Rollo and his clown troupe arrive in Redhaven, the same town the Pumpkinhead movies live in. Frankie, played by Frankie Honey, figures out that their visit may be connected to a child who vanished years ago. When she becomes convinced the clowns have their sights on her little brother, she has to get her friends to help her uncover the truth before he disappears with them for good. Ava Ferrer, Azriel Dalman and Joe Moore round out the cast. Front Street Pictures produces, and Garrard writes and directs, reuniting the team from both Pumpkinhead films.
Stine’s line on it, from the October announcement: “Clowns have been scaring kids long before I ever got to them. I just gave them a reason to be afraid of the ones in Redhaven.” It premieres on Tubi in 2027.
Pumpkinhead 2 is streaming now
The movie the panel was really there to sell is already out. R.L. Stine’s Pumpkinhead 2 premiered on Tubi on Friday, October 9, and it’s free to watch. Inspired by Stine’s The Haunting Hour, it follows Sam (Bean Reid) and Becka (Adeline Lo) as they race to stop a new Pumpkinhead curse from claiming the entire town of Redhaven. The room saw a clip from it before the Afraid of Clowns surprise.
Cassandra Peterson plays a character named Cassandra, and she’s clearly having fun with it. “R.L. Stine and I have been in the business of scaring kids for a long time,” she said, “so joining PUMPKINHEAD 2 was such a treat. Playing Cassandra was the perfect ‘witchy’ role for me.”
Josh Van Houdt, Tubi’s vice president of original scripted content, explained the pairing: “Elvira and R.L. Stine each gave me a completely different way to experience horror growing up, Elvira through her unforgettable late-night movie presentations, and Stine through twisty, page-turning novels. Bringing them together in one film feels both nostalgic and completely fresh.”
Why Tubi keeps going back to Stine
The numbers explain it. Tubi says its audience streams more than 53 million hours of horror a month, and Stine is the writer a lot of that audience read first. Lewinson called him “the first taste of fear for legions of fans.” All of these movies sit in Terror on Tubi, the service’s year-round horror hub, and the Redhaven films are turning into a shared town with its own curses. Pumpkinhead came out in October 2025, Pumpkinhead 2 this month, and Afraid of Clowns and The Babysitter both arrive in 2027.
You can watch Pumpkinhead 2 free on Tubi, and the official trailer is on Tubi’s YouTube channel.
Images courtesy of Tubi.
Which Stine book did you read first, and is The Babysitter the right one to adapt next? Tell me in the comments on the channel.
