‘Wanted’ director, Timur Bekmambetov is reported according to Production Weekly to be attached to an adaption of Peter Ackroyd’s 2008 novel, ‘The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein’ which is a retelling of the story in first person.
Publishers, Random House, have written about the book on their website as follows-
When two nineteenth-century Oxford students—Victor Frankenstein, a serious researcher, and the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley—form an unlikely friendship, the result is a tour de force that could only come from one of the world’s most accomplished and prolific authors.
This haunting and atmospheric novel opens with a heated discussion, as Shelley challenges the conventionally religious Frankenstein to consider his atheistic notions of creation and life. Afterward, these concepts become an obsession for the young scientist. As Victor begins conducting anatomical experiments to reanimate the dead, he at first uses corpses supplied by the coroner. But these specimens prove imperfect for Victor’s purposes. Moving his makeshift laboratory to a deserted pottery factory in Limehouse, he makes contact with the Doomsday men—the resurrectionists—whose grisly methods put Frankenstein in great danger as he works feverishly to bring life to the terrifying creature that will bear his name for eternity.
This new feature, which is being adapted by playwright and screenwriter David Auburn (‘Proof’ & ‘The Lake House’) is just another film added to Bekmambetov’s list of films that he is supposedly already attached to including ‘Wanted 2’, ‘Moby Dick’, ‘The Last Witch Hunter’, ‘Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter’, ‘Black Lightening’ and ‘The Knights Templar’.
So with his schedule already so packed, do you think a new Frankenstein adaptation is what is needed right now? The last time we saw a Frankenstein film was Kenneth Branagh’s 1994 film starring Robert De Niro and Helena Bonham Carter, maybe it is time for the infamous corpse to rise again?
