To doublecheck the beginning of the following trailer, PG tried to locate a definitive number for how many RL Stine titles have been published but was unable to do so. A great many is his conclusion.
From i09:
Even though Jack Black’s R.L. Stine was made out to be the star of 2015’s Goosebumps film, the character is conspicuously missing in the first trailer for the sequel, Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween. Thankfully, the true icon from the franchise, Slappy the Dummy (voiced by Jack Black) is back and terrorizing children once again.
Fans of Stine’s books will recall that Slappy, like all ventriloquist dummies and dolls possessed by malevolent beings, always comes back no matter what the hapless targets of his rage do to destroy him. In the new trailer, a trio of unsuspecting children Madison Iseman, Caleel Harris, and Jeremy Ray Taylor stumble upon a dilapidated house in their neighborhood that contains a mysterious coffin and a copy of R.L. Stine’s Haunted Halloween that, when read from, releases Slappy from his confinement.
Link to the rest at i09
Even though Goosebumps was definitely around when I was a kid, I never read a single one. Never appealed to me.
I did enjoy the first movie with Jack Black, though. If he’s not in the second and it’s not really a proper sequel to the first, I most likely won’t bother seeing it.