He’s made his name dabbling in the magic arts, but now it looks like all grown up Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe will be moving out from the cupboard under the stairs to tackle some science. MAD SCIENCE! to be exact!
He clearly still has a thing for lightning bolts though, as he’s looking to play the lead role in a new Frankenstein imagining.
Originally announced back in 2011, the film will be penned by Chronicle scribe Max Landis, whose plate has been filling u pretty fast since his 2012 sorta-superhero smash hit. But his vision of Frankenstein’s story will be a little bit different than before, being described as a period piece that is “a tale of friendship and redemption.”
Here’s how Landis described it to ShockTillYouDrop.com a couple years ago:
“I began to pick apart our knowledge of ‘Frankenstein’ and discovered that the public’s idea of this myth comes from a million different places in 2011. …I became committed to recontextualizing it all so it all worked in one story. By the end of the day, it’s a period piece and yes, it’s from Igor’s perspective, but man it’s cool. It’s the best thing I’ve written.”
Variety reports that while Radcliffe was previously just interested in the lead role of hunchbacked manservant Igor, which is certainly an intriguing slant for the film to take as the character has traditionally always been played up as either creepy side-kick or even creepier comic relief, it looks like his involvement is now a done deal.
As previously reported, Paul McGuigan is now also attached to direct instead of original director, Shawn “Real Steel” Levy. McGuigan’s previous feature film efforts include Push and Lucky Number Slevin, both films that were certainly not bad, per se, but just lacked a little something. Since then however, McGuigan has been honing his craft on BBC’s critically acclaimed Benedict Cumberbatch starring Sherlock, directing 4 out of 6 episodes of the mini-series. If he can bring that level of talent to this, then we should be in for a interesting Frankenstein film.
You know, besides for that other Frankenstein film also coming out, with Aaron Eckhart playing the monster in modern times fighting werewolves or something. Oh Hollywood, you bandwagonning beast.
McGuigan and Landis’ Frankenstein is set to go into production later in the year, although no expected release date has been set yet.
Last Updated: March 1, 2013
