The Casper the Friendly Ghost universe is about to expand with a new live-action series at Peacock, reports Variety.
Currently in development, the series is an entirely new take on the character. It’s described as a horror/adventure show reimagining the origin of Casper in a coming-of-age story. After a new family comes to small-town Eternal Falls, he gets caught up in a mystery that unearths over 100 years of dark secrets
Writer and executive producer Kai Yu Wu has plenty of experience with the supernatural. Wu got her start as a staff writer on NBC’s Hannibal before moving on to CW’s The Flash. Most recently, the Taiwanese-American adapted Yangsze Choo’s novel The Ghost Bride as a Netflix original series.
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Casper debuted in the 1945 short cartoon The Friendly Ghost and appeared in two more, titled There’s Good Boos To-Night and A Haunting We Will Go, before being published as a comic book in 1949. The character has also starred in five TV shows since 1959, the most recent of which, Casper’s Scare School, aired from 2009 to 2012.
However, the personable poltergeist is best known for 1995’s Casper starring Christina Ricci and Bill Pullman. It marked the first film to have a fully CGI character in the lead role, with Devon Sawa playing Casper in his human form. Grossing nearly $300 million worldwide, it was followed by the direct-to-video films Casper: A Spirited Beginning and Casper Meets Wendy, the latter of which starred a young Hilary Duff.
Stay tuned for more news about Peacock’s Casper series. In the meantime, revisit the scene from Casper in which he becomes a real boy below.