(Left to right) Charity Wakefield, Eddie Izzard, Mason Cook, Portia de Rossi, and Jerry O'Connell. NBC's remake of
The Munsters will be told from Herman's (Jerry O'Connell) point of view. A man/monster that was created by his father in-law, Grandpa Munster (Eddie Izzard). He will struggle with his body always being in state of decay while being married to a woman that never ages, Lily Munster (Portia de Rossi).
What sets the story in motion though is Eddie Munster, Herman's son, who has been normal his whole life, but all of a sudden experiences a hairy transformation in the pilot episode. The family had hidden it's monstrous qualities from Eddie and now that the wolf is out of the bag they feel as though it is time to share with Eddie who they really are.
This version of the Munsters is created by Bryan Fuller, the fahter of
Pushing Daisies. If he can balance the quirkiness and heart that
Pushing Daisies had he may have himself a winner. Fuller sees it as a show that will be able to include a family quality to it like NBC's
Parenthood, while also being able to walk on the darker side like HBO's popular vampire show,
True Blood.
"The Munsters actually do what monsters do: they eat people and they have to live with the ramifications of being monstrous. It's like grounding it in a reality because the half-hour was a sitcom, we saw the monsters: they were monsters on the outside and weren't monsters on the inside. For us, they're monsters outside and inside, and we get to double our story."
There were a few fun homages to the original series, including hints of the famed theme. Will you be using that as the show's theme song?
That was for Comic-Con only. We're going to talk to the rights holder because it was actually composed by producer Frank Marshall's father, Jack Marshall. We have to negotiate the rights to be able to use that theme with him but he's very enthusiastic about it. We're going to try to work it out so we can use the theme in the show. But we don't know yet if we can. I like what our composer Jim Dooley did; the point is to have a taste of it but we didn't want to do the comedy. We didn't want the score to be Pushing Daisies. As we've been working on the music, we've been talking about how to differentiate Mockingbird Lane from Pushing Daisies. They're both vibrant, but Mockingbird Lane is obviously much darker and more fiendish. We have the same composer doing the music, and we needed to create our new sound for Mockingbird Lane using the old sound from The Munsters.
How soon could the ferocious family pet Spot appear?
You see him at the end of the pilot in CGI. He'll look like a Harry Potter dragon. It's like Eddie's invisible friend.
Your plans are to bring in some of the classic Universal monsters -- Wolfman, Creature From the Black Lagoon, etc. Will they be live-action or CGI?
The Creature from the Black Lagoon will be like [1988's] Splash, Too: When he's wet he's the Gillman. That's one of the best makeup effects -- prosthetics -- that anybody has done, that monster costume. And when he's dry, he's a handsome guy.
Fuller also added that besides including the Creature From the Black Lagoon you can also expect the Phantom of the Opera to make an appearance in the series. But that's not all:
"The Wolfman, Frankenstein, Dracula, the Metaluna monster from Silent Earth and the Mole People. I would love to rope in all of those characters from those stories, as well as get the Cat People and get those types of things. But we can't just do Monster of the Week; they have to have a reason for being in the story -- an emotional capacity -- for us to interact with their characters."
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