The Playlist

Cannes 2013: Surprises & Notable Absence ...

The obsessives' guide to contemporary cinema via film discussion, news, reviews, features, nostalgia, movie music, soundtracks, DVDs and more.

Interviews

The 'Fantastic Voyage' Can Wait, Shawn Levy May Take Fox’s ‘Frankenstein’ Instead

By Edward Davis
|
August 24, 2011 10:35 AM
|
0 Comments

Updated: It's official, Shawn Levy is now attached to this project.

By Kevin Jagernauth
|
August 18, 2011 8:31 AM
|
0 Comments

Levy Considering A Frankenstein Flick & 'Maleficent' In case "At The Mountains Of Madness," "The Dark Tower" and "The Lone Ranger" haven't tipped you off, these days studios are more wary than ever about the coin they spend. It's an irony considering that only tent-pole fare seems to get greenlit these days, but even then, expensive, costly gambles like "Cowboys & Aliens" are projects no movie executive can afford to make. Which brings us to "Fantastic Voyage." Produced by James Cameron, and set to be in 3D, the hot project found a number of directors circling or involved at various points including Paul Greengrass, Tarsem, Darren Aronofsky, Jonathan Mostow, Timur Bekmambetov and Louis Leterrier, before Shawn Levy signed on in February. But it seems the director and Fox are at odds over how to proceed with the production.

By Oliver Lyttelton
|
June 23, 2011 1:19 AM
|
1 Comment

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.

By Drew Taylor
|
April 11, 2011 11:37 AM
|
2 Comments

When we interviewed Danny Boyle a few months back, around the time that his humanist survival tale "127 Hours" was hitting screens, we overheard him talking to someone about his upcoming "Frankenstein" play. "Would it play on the West End?" the person asked, referring to the London version of Broadway. "No, no, no," the typically exuberant Boyle said. "It's a little too extreme for that crowd."

By Kevin Jagernauth
|
March 29, 2011 3:46 AM
|
0 Comments

Writer Stuart Beattie knows his way around a blockbuster. With films like "Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl," "30 Days of Night," "G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra" and "Australia" under his belt, Beattie certainly has a handle on big screen spectacles and genre fare -- and he's about to tackle one of cinema's most famed monsters of all time.

By Edward Davis
|
November 3, 2010 4:01 AM
|
2 Comments

Filmmaker Says He Doesn't Want 'Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde,' Or 'Frankenstein' To Be In 3D, Is On The Fence About 'Slaughterhouse Five' Mexican filmmaker Guillermo del Toro is perhaps today's biggest genre-centric multi-tasker. If his projects file were a kitchen it would be jam-packed with several sous-chefs working on dishes in different states of readiness; many still marinating, trying out different sauce combinations, with some tested in various iterations and ready to to go on the grill.