Rising Writer Max Landis Will Pen The Script
Once again, the ‘Creature of the Moment’ wheel has spun in Hollywood. We’ve seen spates of vampire, alien and zombie movies in recent years, so it was anyone’s guess as to what monster would become in vogue next, but we’ve got bad news to any writers with hip reboots of yetis or gill-men sitting on their hard drives: Frankenstein is in. Danny Boyle tackled Mary Shelley‘s myth on stage earlier in the year, and there’s four different projects in the works focusing on a creature made from reanimated body parts: Guillermo Del Toro has a take, one of his 3,649 dream projects; “Limitless” helmer Neil Burger has a remake of “Bride of Frankenstein” at Universal; “Tomorrow, When The War Began” director Stuart Beattie is attached to comic book adaptation “I, Frankenstein“; and Summit have “This Dark Endeavor,” a collaboration between “Mean Creek” writer Jacob Estes and “Let Me In” director Matt Reeves.
But there’s always room for one more, and Showblitz have news that 20th Century Fox have hired fast-rising scribe Max Landis (son of “An American Werewolf In London” director John Landis), who wrote the upcoming found-footage superhero flick “Chronicle” for the company, to write another new version on the classic tale.
The site says that the logline is being kept under wraps, but Vulture reveals that the take will tell the tale through the eyes of Igor, Victor Frankenstein’s assistant, and that the studio is in early discussions with Ron Howard, whose epic “The Dark Tower” project seems to be slipping away. Howard seems to have turned it down in favor of an adaptation of “Spy Vs. Spy” and Formula 1 picture “Rush,” but Fox are determined to land an A-lister of some kind, with Paul Greengrass and David Yates said to be on the studio’s list.
Of course, those two are on virtually every short-list that turns up these days, and both have other possibilities; Greengrass will next direct Tom Hanks in Somali kidnap drama “Maersk Alabama,” while Yates is one of the names in the running for Disney’s high-priority “Sleeping Beauty” prequel “Maleficent,” and has the gangster drama “Cicero“ on his slate as well, so we think that the chances of landing either are slim. Nevertheless, the studio seems to be going all guns for the project, so we wouldn’t be surprised if this ends up on screens long before any of its competition.
