Geekery: Christopher Pike’s ‘Midnight Club’ Is Coming to Netflix
If you were a teen in the early 90s you’ll remember the distinctive font and art on the cover of Pike’s books, and the creepy and slightly inappropriate horror stories within. Netflix and Mike Flanagan are bringing those stories to the small screen.
Pike’s YA books were the jumping off point for a generation of horror fans. His first book came out in 1985, and he was prolific through the late 1990s. When you were over Goosebumps and Fear Street but weren’t quite ready for King, you read Pike. He wrote about murders, suicides, ghosts, vampires in a way that made you feel like you were reading something you weren’t supposed to as a pre-teen; making it feel a bit more dangerous than it was. His books were routinely banned, which played into that feeling.
Midnight Club is about a group of terminally ill teens in a hospice that meet at midnight to tell scary stories to one another. The group makes a pact that when they die they’ll come back and somehow communicate with those that are still alive. I told you they’re slightly inappropriate stories. Anyway, the club will be used at a platform to tell the many stories from Pike’s books.
Oh, and for you fellow Pike fans out there… the article is correct, we will be incorporating a lot of his books into the series. So whatever your favorite Pike book is, there’s a chance it’ll be part of the show.
— Mike Flanagan (@flanaganfilm) May 5, 2020
Mike Flanagan – the director behind Doctor Sleep, The Haunting at Hill House, Oculus, and Absentia – is heading up the series. He’s on a bit of an excellent horror project tear right now and has shown he can balance grown up and pre-teen scary in one show, so he’s a great choice for this. I could see them making it a 90s era throw back as a more mature, twisted Are You Afraid of the Dark? like show – a YA Tales From the Crypt. I inhaled the books when I was a kid, so I’m curious about where the creative team is taking this.
