Spooky Season Surprise! A fifth “Halloweentown” film is in early development on Disney Channel and Disney+ 20 years after the fourth opus, TheWrap can exclusively reveal.
Lily Houghton and Ryan Koehn are developing the screenplay for Disney, based on the characters created by Paul Bernbaum, who wrote the original 1998 film.
Additional details are still under wraps. It’s unclear if former cast members like Kimberly J. Brown or Sara Paxton will return to lead the franchise. The Aquamarine star replaced Brown as Marnie Piper in the 2006 film Return to Halloweentown.
Houghton wrote the screenplay for the horror comedy “Forbidden Fruits,” which premiered in theaters earlier this year, starring Lili Reinhart and Lola Tung. The writer also produced Netflix’s upcoming YA horror series, “The Body,” which is scheduled to premiere next month.
Koehn served as a staff writer on the “Gossip Girl” reboot from 2021 to 2023. His other writing credits include the thriller “The Mad Whale,” the comedy TV movie “Homeschooled” and the crime drama “As Night Comes.”
The “Halloweentown” franchise has racked up 160 million streaming hours on Disney+ worldwide to date, with the original film ranking among the top 10 most-watched Halloween films last October.
The Disney Channel movie franchise debuted in 1998 with “Halloweentown.” The first film follows 13-year-old Marnie Piper as she discovers that she is descended from a line of powerful witches and must begin her magical training before her powers are gone forever.
Brown played Marnie in the first three films: “Halloweentown”, “Halloweentown II: Kalabar’s Revenge” (2001) and “Halloweentown High” (2004).
The fourth film “Return to Halloweentown” saw Paxton reprise the role of Marnie and follow her as an 18-year-old witch as she attends Witch’s College in Halloweentown with her brother Dylan.
The upcoming film would join Disney’s Halloween collection, which includes “Hocus Pocus,” “Twitches” and Tim Burton’s “The Nightmare Before Christmas.”
All “Halloweentown” films are available to stream on Disney+.
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