We’ve already got vampires and werewolves so all we really need now is the original monster, right?
Screen Rant is reporting that Shawn Levy (Date Night, Real Steel) is off Twentieth Century Fox’s proposed retelling of Frankenstein, and Paul McGuigan of Push fame is on. Which means that we need to gird our loins for the five hundredth adaptation of the classic monster.
Levy was apparently pushing for a big budget blockbuster version of the existential monster mash, while Fox et al wanted to bring in something with a lower budget. So off Mr. Levy goes to direct The Internship with Will Ferrell and Owen Wilson, while McGuigan takes over old Franky.
Fox definitely wants to keep this one on a tight budget. Max Landis, who penned the short, sweet and cheap Chronicle, has written the Frankenstein script. It is said to be a sci-fi version of Mary Shelley’s original novel that will keep in focus Landis’s usual themes of redemption, friendship and other things that were not in the original novel.
Frankenstein is apparently a hot topic right now, with rumors of Ghost House Pictures and RT Features both working on their own versions of the story. No details are yet forthcoming on either, but this potentially means that we could be inundated with various forms of the Frankenstein story in the near future.
Frankenstein has already been adapted numerous times, most famously in the 1931 version starring Boris Karloff as the unnamed Monster built from dead bodies and brought to life via lightning and some very flashy machines.
While that version might be the most iconic, the closest adaptation in tone and subject to the original novel was Kenneth Branagh’s Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. That film cleaved closely to the novel, including introducing a very erudite and long-winded Monster, but ultimately seemed to forget about the source material, and tossed in some good old-fashioned necrophilia for good measure.
It might be nice to see a proper adaptation of the Frankenstein story, if McGuigan and Co. can pull it off. What I do not want to see though is yet another stiff-armed lumbering creature moaning for two hours. Karloff did that first, he did it best, and it should be left alone.
We’ll keep an eye on Fox’s Frankenstein and let you know as more news arises.
