Tubi announced the adaptation Sunday at a New York Comic Con panel, where chief content officer Adam Lewinson confirmed the film alongside Stine himself. It’s set to premiere on the streamer in 2027.
Stine published The Babysitter through Scholastic in July 1989, three years before the first Goosebumps book, and it later landed on the Point Horror list. It’s a straight thriller, no monsters: 16-year-old Jenny takes a babysitting job in a town where a ski-mask attacker is already going after sitters her age.
The film’s logline keeps the crank calls and the prowler, then adds a wrinkle the book didn’t have. Here, Jenny takes the job because she’s desperate to earn money for a prestigious writing program, and the danger closes in once threatening phone calls start and a dangerous fugitive surfaces in town.
Jem Garrard, who wrote and directed Tubi’s R.L. Stine’s Pumpkinhead, writes and executive produces. Trevor Calverley directs, with Blue Ice producing.
It’s the fourth film in Tubi’s R.L. Stine partnership, and the first built on one of his full novels rather than a short from his Nightmare Hour or Haunting Hour anthologies. Lewinson called The Babysitter “one of R.L. Stine’s most iconic novels.”
Jenny hasn’t been cast yet, and Tubi hasn’t named a specific 2027 release date.
