In recent months, Hollywood has been working to re-animate the Frankenstein legend with a bevy of remakes, reboots and reimaginings that are in various stages of development. The one that’s furthest along is Fox’s Frankenstein, which just landed Real Steel and Night at the Museum director Shawn Levy and is based on a script by Max Landis, son of legendary director John Landis. It’s previously been described as a revisionist story that presents “a sci-fi take on the traditional Mary Shelley story, focusing on themes of friendship and redemption.”
Landis recently spoke to Shock Till You Drop about the film and not only revealed a few precious details, told a great story of how he became interested in the mythology in the first place. You’re sure to learn something about Frankenstein, both this movie and the legend, after the jump. Read More »
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Last week, rumors circled that Real Steel director Shawn Levy was thinking of leaving the 3D remake of Fantastic Voyage and looking to jump ship to another Fox project: Frankenstein. Variety is now reporting that, a few minor details aside, that’s become a reality. The film is written by Max Landis and is reportedly a revisionist story that presents “a sci-fi take on the traditional Mary Shelley story, focusing on themes of friendship and redemption.” Levy’s involvement puts this film in the pole position to come out before a half-dozen similar films currently in development. Read More »
I guess that Will Smith meeting didn’t go too well. After news broke that Shawn Levy might leave Fox’s 3D reboot of Fantastic Voyage based on a meeting with the actor, now word has it he’s thinking about staying at Fox but jumping ship over to their Frankenstein project written by Max Landis. Read more after the break. Read More »
Now that Jonah Hill has seriously slimmed down and is rocking one of the two lead roles in 21 Jump Street, opposite Channing Tatum, it doesn’t seem all that strange that he would be set to star opposite Mark Wahlberg in a comedic action buddy picture. Think of him as a younger, shorter Will Ferrell, and Good Time Gang as a less comedic companion piece to The Other Guys.
Good Time Gang, written by Max Landis (who seems to have a script put into development at least once a week) is already earning comparisons to Lethal Weapon, although the description of the two lead roles as “a bumbling pair of antiheroes” doesn’t quite conjure up the Murtaugh/Riggs partnership. More details to be found after the break. Read More »
Is The Dark Tower in danger of dying? It looked like that might be the case not long ago, but Universal asked for some script changes and budget cuts, which director Ron Howard recently said were not terribly deep or radical. The project looked like it might be able to shoot next spring.
But last night we heard that Ron Howard was attached to direct the Formula One movie Rush that hopes to shoot this year. That didn’t have to mean The Dark Tower was dead, as he could (conceivably, if not easily) make that film while Brian Grazer and Akiva Goldsman prepped the Stephen King adaptation this fall.
But now Ron Howard is also attached to a film version of the classic Mad Magazine strip Spy Vs. Spy, and his name is also being thrown around in conjunction to a version of Frankenstein that Max Landis is writing for Fox, which reportedly tells the story from Igor’s point of view. It looks like Frankenstein is not a film that he’ll direct, but the talk in general seems to imply that The Dark Tower might fall. Read More »
Get ready for Merlin to be the new Snow White, or the new Linda Lovelace, or whatever icon studios and producers decide to compete over next. Warner Bros. has just tapped Ed Whitworth, a former journalist who evidently has experience as a script reader for Oprah Winfrey’s company, to adapt the T.A. Barron youth-lit novel The Lost Years of Merlin.
Surprise, surprise, this would be a Merlin origin tale, following “Merlin’s journey from being a boy washed on the shores of Wales with no memory and no home, to him becoming a young man learning to use his powers and ultimately defender of the natural world and eventual mentor to King Arthur.” (This project was once at Paramount, but the option lapsed and WB stepped in. It is also different from the modern-day Merlin story that Working Title was putting together last year.) [THR]
After the break, Max Landis picks up a pipe, and a good genre director tries his hand at kids’ holiday fare. Read More »
Briefly: Young screenwriter Max Landis (being contemplative at left above) has steadily been making bigger and bigger deals. He’s got Chronicle in production at Fox and recently sold his action/comedy script Good Time Gang, called “a cross between The Bourne Identity and Jackass.” Now he’s teaming with producer Brian Grazer and attached director Ron Howard for a film called Amnesty.
We don’t have a plot recap at this point, but in the announcement of the deal Deadline relates that the script “blends Robert Ludlum and JRR Tolkien.” I have no idea what that would actually be on the page — the combo suggests any number of possibilities. Oddly, it also suggests the sort of genre-bending that is the core of Ron Howard’s current big project, The Dark Tower. Akiva Goldsman is writing the first feature installment of that, but I wonder if we’ll see Max Landis in the writing credits for the planned Dark Tower series somewhere down the line.
Summit is pinning some hopes on Stephen Chbosky‘s adaptation of his own novel The Perks of Being a Wallflower. The project has been waiting for Emma Watson to be finished with Harry Potter so she can play a lead role, and also has Logan Lerman, Mae Whitman and Paul Rudd in the cast. (Logan Lerman is the titular wallflower.) Now Nina Dobrev is going to jump into the cast from The Vampire Diaries as a character named Candace. [Deadline]
After the break, Billy Bob Thornton goes to the disco, and Fox hires more cast for Chronicle. Read More »
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