Frankenstein (and his monster) have been a staple of movies, comics, cartoons etc for a very long time now. But we haven't seen a proper movie version since Kenneth Branagh's mediocre adaptation back in 1994. But now it seems the good Dr and his lumbering creation are about to come back into fashion, as two movies are on the horizon. One is the comic book adap I,Frankenstein, and the other is Shawn Levy's more classic approach to the story under Fox Studios. While chatting to Collider Levy drops a few details. He says the monster will be brought to life using the same technology as the robots in Real Steel, while revealing that in this version there will be more than one of them..
“In the case of Frankenstein, my whole approach is based on a mo-cap SimulCam playback so that it’s not a dude with scars on his face. It’s not just kind of latex and a costume; it would be a motion-capture performance of the monster—I can give away maybe not too much by saying there’s more than one in our version—and then I would go to Europe, shoot the movie, do scenes with the real actors and I would be able to see the motion-captured monster in real time due to SimulCam, so yes that is our technological VFX paradigm for Frankenstein.”
Levy also says that because
I, Frankenstein is shooting now and be out first, it will hopefully raise the bar in terms of what they want to do with their movie. He goes on to quell rumors that Fox had concerns for the large budget, and say sit's more about getting the casting right..
“That script is ready to rock, I am ready to rock on that script, but as was reported it’s not a small budget. My Frankenstein, it ain’t gonna get done well and the way I would insist on doing it for $35 million. So anytime you’re in like $70-$80 million for a movie, you’re really thinking about ‘Well who are these two guys?’ in our case it’s Igor and Victor Frankenstein, ‘What’s the juicy pairing that makes that a good bet? That makes that financial bet smart and worth it?’ because I am in the business of not squandering the money the studios give me to make movies… It was more like ‘Okay if that’s the budget, we’ve gotta make sure we cast it really, really right’ and so that’s the moment we’re in.”
I thought
Real Steel was decent, definitely better than I expected so I'm looking forward to seeing what Levy can deliver with this. I assume the "more than one monster" thing refers to a bride that Frankenstein attempts to create for the monster. In the novel he is unsuccessful in animating the creature but I guess some alterations will be made. For more on this as well as
Real Steel 2 and
Fantastic Voyage click the link below.