Bill Condon Poised to Reanimate ‘Bride of Frankenstein’ in Connected-Universe Remake
Having successfully shepherded the Emma Watson-led Beauty and the Beast remake to a billion-dollar worldwide gross, Bill Condon now has the world in his palm. An Academy Award winner with blockbuster bona fides, he’s pretty much free to take whatever project he’d like. Today brings news of what his next big endeavor might be, and it looks like he’s going to make a lateral move to stick with big budget studio work. Condon chronicled the life of British filmmaker James Whale with the celebrated Of Gods and Monsters, now he’s poised to tackle Whale’s work head-on.
This morning, Deadline has the exclusive that Condon has entered talks to direct Universal’s remake of The Bride of Frankenstein, the canonized horror film that paired the bolt-necked behemoth with an equally ghoulish wife. The property has been in the works for some time now, attracting rumors of Angelina Jolie in the starring role back in 2015 but moving forward on the fast-track in 2017. This film would fit in with Universal’s nascent connected universe of repurposed monster movies, having been previously established with Dracula Untold and continuing this summer with the Tom Cruise-fronted The Mummy. It’s like they say: you either die an Oscar winner or live long enough to become subsumed by a franchised connected universe.
Condon’s intimately familiar with the source material and, as Deadline’s item notes, even incorporated a nod to Whale’s Frankenstein pictures in Twilight: Breaking Dawn — Part I. Nobody has signed anything as of yet, but what’s for sure is that it would be one elegantly well-designed mad scientist chamber.