Frankenstein Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Why recast the relatively small role of a doctor in a thriller? Michael Mann's Manhunter was an excellent thriller, featuring Brian Cox in a small role as the imprisoned, chillingly cold cannibal Dr. Hannibal Lecktor. When the time came to adapt another one of Thomas Harris' bestsellers, Jonathan Demme went in a different direction, casting Anthony Hopkins as the good doctor. The character's family name was restored (Lecter, not Lecktor) and a whole new set of tics and tricks were placed on display. Hopkins may have been the only actor alive who could have hammed it up to such extreme levels and yet, somehow, made Lector creepy rather than campy, unnerving rather than unbelievable. For his memorable efforts in The Silence of the Lambs, Hopkins won an Academy Award.

Recasting villains is a tricky business. Everyone needs to love, identify with, and cheer the hero or heroine, but if the villain doesn't provide the requisite level of opposition, the picture runs the risk of becoming unbalanced, leaving a gaping hole that cannot be filled in with special effects. And if an actor has established the character in the public's mind, it's difficult for anyone else to measure up.

So Dylan Walsh has an advantage in The Stepfather, which opens tomorrow. Terry O'Quinn originated the title role in the 1987 original, and was a truly memorable monster. Yet the film is not steeped in the public consciousness to a high degree, and O'Quinn has become much better known from playing John Locke in Lost. Walsh's fame, such as it is, comes from the lesser-seen TV series Nip/Tuck. Walsh has a shot of creating his own distinct brand of villain.

If you're a fan of the classic Universal Studios movie monsters, including Dracula, Frankenstein, the Wolfman, the Creature from the Black Lagoon, the Mummy, and more, then you've probably found yourself haunted by a severe lack of ginormous books that focus on your obsession. With Halloween just around the corner, Michael Mallory's Universal Studios Monsters: A Legacy of Horror arrives just in time.

It's chock full of over 300 black and white and 25 color behind-the-scenes photos, original movie posters, publicity shots, and articles from people like James Whale (director of Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein, and many more), makeup marvel Jack P. Piece, FX man John Fulton, and more. It's officially endorsed by the studio, so I'm not sure if this will be the Bela Lugosi tell-all expose that you're looking for. The whole package is 252 pages long, and at 9" by 12 ", it can double as a blunt object if you need to brain anyone.

Check out a very cool exclusive pic from the book over at Horror Squad.

Enchanted director Kevin Lima is on board to direct a new version of Mary Shelley's classic horror novel Frankenstein. Frank has a helluva twist, though; the scientist cooking up cadavers is an "antisocial" young woman in med school who decides to "create" her own friends. And... it's a romantic comedy. Can you say undead boyfriend?!

According to Variety, the writer and one of the executive producers of this potentially awesome project is Karey Kirkpatrick, the writer of The Spiderwick Chronicles, Charlotte's Web, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and James and the Giant Peach, among others. He also directed the Eddie Murphy vehicle Imagine That,

Both Lima and Kirkpatrick have a bunch of projects that are in development, although Lima's have more of a family-friendly vibe (The Spook's Apprentice, Candy Land, The Incredible Mr. Limpet, and Thumb). Kirkpatrick's optioned projects include writing, directing, and producing Captain Abdul's Pirate School, about a girl who is sent to pirate school and plans a mutiny against their evil school principal slash lead pirate, as well as the more adult-minded The Best a Man Can Get, which he is also writing, producing and directing.

Based on distributor Fox 2000's track record, Frank could be focused more on the rom-com than the potential for blood and a cool chick lead, but maybe indie production company Radar Pictures (the peeps behind Richard Kelley's The Box, and remakes of The Amityville Horror and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, among a number of other projects) will make sure that we get a dash of gore with our giggles and girly goodness.

I'm voting for Kat Dennings as our protagonist -- she's smart, snarky, and sweet, and she plays the perfect "outsider." Who would you cast?

(Thanks to Zach for noting that Kirkpatrick is a man. Oops.)

Now that we've launched these two new genre sites -- Horror Squad and ScFi Squad -- there's going to be a good amount of content over there that's not over here. Like this post from SciFi Squad about Guillermo Del Toro, who just updated (and cast) a couple of his new projects.

Don't ask me how Guillermo del Toro works on four hundred projects at once, because it always amazes me to see how much he's got going on, and it's also inspiring to see a filmmaker that passionate about creating and conceptualizing and coming up with awesome new things for the world and his fans. Guillermo del Toro is exactly the kind of guy we want handling some of these more fanboy-ish properties because he's a true geek -- and while other filmmakers are using their celebrity status to attend parties at the Playboy mansion, this mofo is designing creatures and drawing in his sketchbook and working hard to please us.

Round of applause before we move on ...

In a new interview on BBC Radio, Del Toro let loose that he's already cast friend (and collaborator) Doug Jones as Frankenstein in his planned adaptation of the classic tale, and will begin testing things like make-up within the next few weeks -- though he admits (to Digital Spy) that he's "not in a hurry" and is perfectly fine shooting the film five or six years from now. "You have one shot in your lifetime at these things and I don't want to do it the wrong way." Next up: Del Toro reveals who he's already cast in The Hobbit.

Read the rest at SciFi Squad

The reason everyone loves Guillermo del Toro can, I think, be summed up in this new Hobbit related quote. "Believe me, I am jumping up-and-down inside this fat body!"

Yes, del Toro teased us all with Hobbit talk when he appeared at the Director's Guild of America recently and spilled all kinds of information regarding Middle Earth and his adaptation of Frankenstein. ComingSoon has the whole delicious thing, but I'll post my favorite bit -- his research into the mind of J.R.R. Tolkien: "I find you have to discipline yourself to write in the morning, and then watch and read in the afternoons stuff that seems relevant, even in a tangential way. For example, reading or watching World War I documentaries or books that I think inform The Hobbit, strangely enough, because I believe it is a book born out of Tolkien's generation's experience with World War I and the disappointment of being in that field and seeing all those values kind of collapse. I think it's a turning point that you need to familiarize yourself with."

And naturally, he sounds most excited about tackling Smaug. "Essentially, Smaug represents so many things: greed, pride ... he's 'the Magnificent,' after all. The way his shadow is cast in the narrative you cannot then show it and have it be one thing, he has to be the embodiment of all those things. He's one of the few dragons that will have enormous scenes with lines. He has some of the most beautiful dialogues in those scenes! The design, I'm pretty sure that will be the last design we will sign off on, and the first design we have attempted. It is certainly a matter of turning every stone before figuring out what he looks like, because what he looks like will tell you what he is."

Click image above to view larger hi-res version

Although writer-director Guillermo Del Toro will be busy for the next 50-or-so years working on a slew of previously-announced projects (including The Hobbit and a new version of Frankenstein), there's still hope the man will return to complete a Hellboy trilogy with a third and final film. If that time should ever come, we here at Cinematical would like to urge (beg? blackmail?) Mr. Del Toro to please consider casting the woman above as -- I dunno -- Hellboy's long lost half-sister/daughter/make something up? Ahem. Dare I say that's one sucker punch I wouldn't mind leaning into. Not sure where this photo was taken (a friend sent it in), though we'd like to thank the anonymous Hellgirl above for her passion and dedication ... and we'd also like to thank the makers of red paint.

And in honor of pretty ladies in geeked-up costumes, take a look back at our Hottest of 2008 Comic Con gallery below ...

Readers of this blog are well aware that Mr. Guillermo Del Toro (aka Mr. Awesome Genre Film) is about to spend the next several years helming a pair of Hobbit movies for producer Peter Jackson ... who is certainly no slouch in the action / horror / fantasy department. And we all know that Del Toro has long yearned to do an adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness -- which he probably will be doing at Universal some time in the future.

Ah, but there are two words you'll hear a lot regarding Guillermo Del Toro: "Universal" and "future." More specifically, the filmmaker and the studio look to be teaming up for the next two decades! According to one doozy of a Variety article, Uni and Guille will be teaming up for (get this) new versions of Frankenstein, Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde, and Slaughterhouse-Five*, as well as an adaptation of Dan Simmons' upcoming "alternate reality Charles Dickens" novel Drood! Oh, and he'll also be producing Hater with Mark Steven Johnson and Crimson Peak with Matthew Robbins!

This guy's like the Derek Jeter of genre directors! And frankly, it couldn't happen to a cooler moviemaker. I'll include a few choice quotes after the jump, but you should probably just peruse the whole article for yourself. It actually makes you want to look PAST The Hobbit so you can get a peek at (dear lord) Guillermo Del Toro's Frankenstein. I get goose bumps just thinking about it.

(* Gotta feel bad for Frank Darabont. He really wants to make this movie.)

It's a show-too-much trailer, which is missing some of the original's goodness, but I have to admit: My interest was piqued by the Death Race trailer that Erik shared last week. There were three things that got me: Joan Allen, Ian McShane, and "Welcome to the Jungle." Mixed together, they're enough to get me into the theater on a rainy day, hoping that it's an '80s rock fest of driving action. But now there's an official, tasty fourth reason. MTV has confirmed that David Carradine has a cameo.

Paul W.S. Anderson said that he didn't want the film "to become a cheesy cameo-fest," but one main player is coming back to the fold. Or, at least, I hope so. "There's obviously been, 'Oh, where's the David Carradine cameo?' It's there, and I think it's a nice thing for fans." Bring on Frankenstein!

However, I'm sure it can't be as cool as his Kwai Chang Caine-like cameo in Lizzie Maguire. Penned by the lovely sister/brother writing pair of Nina and Jeremy Bargiel, Carradine gets back into kung-fu fighting to help the wee Maguire become Jet Li's sidekick. (Go here to see the cameo, which starts at about 4:30.) Okay, I kid, but I still love that cameo.

The world needs more mainstream David Carradine (that's not a cameo in Epic Movie.)

Just about anyone who follows horror has bemoaned the sorry state of the genre these days. Nearly everything is a remake, either of some 1970s or 1980s classic or of some recent Asian hit. The rare films that aren't remakes are simply lazy copies of whatever worked a year earlier, the current "torture porn" subgenre, for example. And hardly anything screens for the press, which means that even the studios now understand how low things have sunk.

The new film The Ruins likewise isn't screening for the press, but it is based -- of all things -- on an actual book! With pages! It's by Scott B. Smith, who many years ago wrote both the book and screenplay for the excellent A Simple Plan. The new movie inspired me to look up other literary-based horror movies (whether inspired by novels or short stories). Sadly, aside from Stephen King and the upcoming Midnight Meat Train (based on Clive Barker's short story), I couldn't find much good recent work, but there is plenty to choose from ...

While speaking to MTV, Guillermo del Toro shed a bit more light on his rumored Frankenstein project, as well as talked more about possibly directing the two Hobbit films and the final Harry Potter flick, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Unfortunately, I can't see the man taking on all of those films -- especially since both The Hobbit and Harry Potter have strict deadlines to meet. First up, MTV asked whether del Toro was still interested in re-visiting Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Good news is that del Toro very much wants to put his Frankenstein take up on the big screen, however because of the writer's strike he hasn't managed to write much. He claims to have written some notes prior to the strike, but decided to stop all writing once the strike happened in order to support the writers. As of now, he says, all he can do is draw: "The only way to do the Shelley novel is to actually do a four-hour miniseries," he said. But I think there permutations in which you can tell the myth in a different way." del Toro also joked that he will cast Robert De Niro in the role of Frankenstein, and that the director himself will "appear shirtless for most of the length of the film."

Regarding The Hobbit, del Toro said he's heard rumblings but nothing has come about. Says del Toro, "I keep an open mind, but nothing is official." Regarding Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, del Toro said he's still very interested in directing the seventh film if he were approached. He says, "Now that the novels have grown darker, I'm definitely interested ... After the third film, they've evolved really into a very nice universe to play in." He also admits to have read the seventh book (which he received from his "daughter") and claims to have been "very moved by the ending." So, if it were up to you, which of these three would you like to see Guillermo del Toro direct: Frankenstein, The Hobbit or Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows? Sign off below ...