Movies
‘Poor Things’: Yorgos Lanthimos is Making His Own ‘Frankenstein’ and Mark Ruffalo Will Star
Mark Ruffalo, a little-known actor who most famously appeared in 1996 horror movie The Dentist whether you remember him being in there or not, has signed on to star in Poor Things, the new movie from Yorgos Lanthimos (The Killing of a Sacred Deer). The scoop comes courtesy of Collider, with the site reminding that Poor Things is a Frankenstein-esque tale.
The movie will adapt Alasdair Gray’s 1992 book Poor Things, with Emma Stone recently joining the cast. Last we heard, Willem Dafoe was also in talks for a potential role in the film.
Deadline recently detailed the Searchlight and Film4 project, “The film will be a Victorian tale of love, discovery and scientific daring. Poor Things tells the incredible story of Belle Baxter, a young woman brought back to life by an eccentric but brilliant scientist.”
Wikipedia recaps the book’s storyline in further detail…
“The main body of the work centres on Bella Baxter, a woman whose early life and identity are the subject of some ambiguity. That ambiguity is complicated by her husband Archibald McCandless’s autobiography, “Episodes from the Early Life of a Scottish Public Health Officer,” which distorts the truth about his life with Bella. This is followed by Bella’s (or Victoria’s) refutation of its facts, suggesting that her “poor fool” of a husband has concocted a life for her from the prevailing gothic and romantic motifs of the period: it “positively stinks of all that was morbid in that most morbid of centuries”. This is reinforced by the novel’s intricate echoes of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.
“These fictitious historical documents are prefaced with an introduction by one Alasdair Gray, who presents himself as the editor of the following text, and relates the ‘discovery’ of the papers by his real-life friends, Michael Donnelly and Elspeth King. The introduction also hosts a critique of Glasgow City Council’s treatment of its culture and heritage in the neglect of the local history museum, and a brief mention of Glasgow’s time as the European Capital of Culture in 1990, which would be the subject of a more sustained satire in his novel Something Leather.”
Tony McNamara (The Favourite) is writing the script.
Described as “Ted meets ET,” David Mikalson’s raunchy comedy Goblin is being brought to life over at A24, and Will Forte (“The Four Seasons”) is now in talks to star.
Deadline first reported the news this afternoon.
Kenneth Branagh has been cast to voice the titular Goblin in the upcoming A24 movie, with the character said to be “green-colored” as well as “anatomically correct.”
Skyler Gisondo (Superman) is reportedly playing the Goblin’s human best friend.
The mysterious project sounds a bit like films including A Gnome Named Gnorm and more recently, Frankie Freako, though it’s important to note that it’s not billed as a horror movie.
Deadline details, “After [Mikalson] hatched the idea to make an outrageous buddy comedy about a goblin, using a practical puppet and operating outside the Hollywood system, his script quickly got him a rep team. While others might have eyed the raunchy comedy as a writing sample or planned to wait to see the micro-budget version Mikalson has been directing in Kentucky, A24 jumped all over it. The hot indie essentially has agreed to finance a full feature.”
“There was a lot of interest, but A24 came with what Mikalson really wanted, after spending all his money crafting the puppet title character: they acquired the movie and agreed to let him make it with a significantly increased budget than what he had left after creating the anatomically correct title character,” Deadline’s report goes on to explain.
What does the titular Goblin actually look like? Well, a cake that Mikalson had whipped up for his reps might give us our first look at what to expect. Deadline explains the photo you’ll see down below, “Take a look at the cake he commissioned with Marc Gravelle at Cake Art in West Hollywood, to present to his reps as thanks for making his dream come true.”
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