Choose Your Own Adventure: The Abominable Snowman
Interactive DVD adventure with branching storylines.
Choose Your Own Adventure: The Abominable Snowman is a 2006 live-action interactive DVD movie based on the Choose Your Own Adventure gamebook of the same name by R. A. Montgomery. It was released on DVD on July 25, 2006, and was produced by Jeff Norton and Michelle Crames of Lean Forward Media. The film allows viewers to make choices every 3–6 minutes using their DVD player remote control to determine the story's outcome, with over eleven possible endings.
Quick Facts
- Director
- Bob Doucette
- Producer
- Michelle Crames / Jeff Norton
- Writer
- Shawn Tanaka / Doug Wood / Elise Allen
- Distributor
- Goldhil Entertainment
- Released
- 25 July 2006
- Country
- United States
- Runtime
- 80 minutes (interactive)
- Language
- English / Nepali
Facts from the source article.
Lore & Background
The story follows the North siblings—Benjamin, Crista, and Marco—as they attempt to rescue their missing Uncle Rudy, who has gone to the Himalayas in search of the mythical Yeti. The first decision the viewer makes is whether to parachute from or stay aboard their Fokker F27 after a fuel leak. Producer Jeff Norton explained that they aspired to create alternate story paths with different characters and story developments while obeying the rules of their fictional world.
Reader's Guide
Choose Your Own Adventure: The Abominable Snowman represents an early attempt to translate the branching narrative of gamebooks into a DVD format, using a patent-pending technology for remote control interactivity. The film was intended to be the first in a series of DVDs based on the Choose Your Own Adventure books, with planned releases including The Lost Jewels and Mystery of the Maya, though as of early 2018 no further releases had occurred. The DVD also includes documentary material on life in Nepal, cast interviews, and a music video. Upon its release, the film was featured on 18 million boxes of Life cereal. Reviews were mixed: the Dove Foundation praised the concept of teaching children about choices and consequences, while Colin Jacobson of DVD Movie Guide found many aspects generic and noted issues with story transitions. The film won several endorsements, including the Dove Foundation's Approval for Family Viewing and a 2006 iParenting Media Award.
Authorship and the Bantam Era
R. A. Montgomery was not merely a contributor to the Choose Your Own Adventure line; he was a founding force behind it. As co-owner of Vermont Crossroads Press, Montgomery gave the fledgling series its first home when he persuaded Edward Packard to let them publish the manuscript that would become the "Adventures of You" line, debuting in 1976 with Sugarcane Island. That initial print run of 8,000 copies was a strong showing for a small regional house, and Montgomery correctly sensed the concept had wider commercial potential. He negotiated a deal with Bantam Books, which took over publishing and turned the property into one of the defining children's franchises of the 1980s and 1990s. Under the Bantam banner, Packard and Montgomery were both selected as core writers, and the two also contracted additional authors to expand the catalog. Between 1979 and 1998, Bantam released 184 titles in the series, and The Abominable Snowman stands as one of Montgomery's contributions to that vast library.
The Branching Narrative Format
The Abominable Snowman, like every title in the Choose Your Own Adventure catalog, is written in the second person and designed for readers aged seven through fourteen. The young reader steps into a role—perhaps a mountain climber, a private investigator, or a spy—and is then confronted, after just a few pages, with two or three branching options. Each choice cascades into further pages and further decisions until the reader lands on one of the book's many possible endings. Early titles in the series could offer as many as 44 distinct conclusions, while later entries trimmed that number to as few as 7. Crucially, there is no fixed formula governing how many pages each path contains, how many endings are favorable versus fatal, or whether the reader must backtrack through earlier pages. That deliberate unpredictability was a core design goal, encouraging repeat playthroughs. Montgomery and Packard also pushed the format into stranger territory, planting trick endings and even endless page loops that could only be escaped by closing the book and starting over from page one.
The 2006 Animated DVD Adaptation
In 2006, the narrative world of The Abominable Snowman crossed over from the printed page into the interactive video medium. The result was an animated DVD movie that preserved the branching, choice-driven structure of Montgomery's original gamebook, allowing viewers to make decisions that shaped the story's direction in real time. This adaptation was significant because it translated the core mechanic of the Choose Your Own Adventure format—the reader as active protagonist—into a visual and auditory experience. Rather than simply watching a linear film, the audience member became a participant, steering the snowman adventure through a series of on-screen choices much as a child flipping through a Bantam paperback would have. The animated style made the mountain setting and the creature itself accessible to the same young demographic the books had targeted since the late 1970s. The DVD stood as one of the more ambitious attempts to carry the series' interactive philosophy into home entertainment during the mid-2000s, a period when the original book line had already been discontinued by Bantam in 1999 and was in the process of being revived by Chooseco.
Legacy, Revival, and the Road to a Live-Action Film
The Choose Your Own Adventure franchise, of which The Abominable Snowman is a part, accumulated extraordinary commercial success during its Bantam run, with more than 250 million copies sold between 1979 and 1998 and translations reaching 40 languages. A 1981 New York Times feature and a subsequent Today Show appearance with Packard gave the series a wave of free national publicity that cemented its cultural footprint. By the 1990s, however, the rise of computer games eroded the series' audience, and Bantam—now under Random House—eventually let the trademark lapse. Chooseco stepped in to relaunch the brand in 2003 and, as of August 2025, began reissuing Packard's titles. The franchise's influence has also extended into other media: Z-Man Games released a co-operative board game in 2018, and Chooseco even filed a trademark suit against Netflix over Black Mirror: Bandersnatch, which settled in 2020. Looking ahead, a live-action film adaptation of the series is in development at 20th Century Studios, with Radio Silence set to direct and Tom Bissell writing, signaling a new chapter for the format.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Choose Your Own Adventure: The Abominable Snowman?
It is a 2006 live-action interactive DVD film that adapts R. A. Montgomery's Choose Your Own Adventure gamebook of the same name. Viewers use their remote control to make decisions that steer the narrative down different branching paths.
How does the interactive branching work in The Abominable Snowman?
Roughly every three to six minutes the story pauses and offers the viewer a choice to select via the DVD remote. Each pick routes the plot along a separate storyline, and the film ultimately branches into more than eleven distinct endings.
Who is in the cast of Choose Your Own Adventure: The Abominable Snowman?
The on-screen and voice cast features William H. Macy, Mark Hamill, Phil LaMarr, Dee Bradley Baker, James Hong, and Kim Mai Guest.
How many endings can you get in The Abominable Snowman?
The DVD contains over eleven possible conclusions, each reached by a different combination of viewer choices made at the branching decision points throughout the film.
Who produced and released The Abominable Snowman?
Jeff Norton and Michelle Crames of Lean Forward Media produced the project, and it hit shelves as a DVD on July 25, 2006.
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