Hang on, another film based on mary Shelley’s epic tale of revenge? Sheesh, how many does that make? 4 or 5? Enough already. Having said that, I’m intrigued to see what plans Guillermo Del Toro has for the reinterpretation of this piece of classic Victorian literature.
Del Toro is currently hard at work in pre-production on the forthcoming movie, which judging by his other films such as Pan’s Labyrinth, will be an intriguing reimagining of the story.
He told the MTV Movie Blog:
“I started doing some notes before the strike. I can only draw now [because of the strike].”
“The only way to do the Shelley novel is to actually do a four-hour miniseries. But I think there are permutations in which you can tell the myth in a different way.”
It already sounds fascinating, and that’s just going from a few sketches, and notes, and some tongue in cheek comments from Del Toro.
Frankenstein is a novel which was originally written by the then 19 year old Mary Shelley in 1818, but the story, and the legend of Frankenstein’s monster is still a popular one to this day.
As well as spawning a whole host of copycats, and spin off stories, the original book has been interpreted and turned in to a film on many occasions, my favourite of which was when director Kenneth Branagh somehow persuaded Robert De Niro to play the monster in a 1994 film which folowed the original book closely.
There have also been recent adaptations for both British and American television.
Del Toro is going to have to come up with something completely different from what has gone before to persuade people to go and see a story which they will have read, or seen told many times before. But you know what? I trust him to do exactly that.
