Movies
NBC’s “Mockingbird Lane” Will Feature The Infamous Universal Monsters!!!!
One of the more highly anticipated pilots is NBC’s forthcoming “The Munsters” reboot, “Mockingbird Lane“, which is getting a colorful, modern transformation to the small screen from “Pushing Daisies” and “Dead Like Me” creator Bryan Fuller.
The Hollywood Reporter caught up with Fuller at Comic-Con to discuss how “Mockingbird Lane” could do for NBC and Universal’s library of monsters what Once Upon a Time has done with its bank of Disney characters, how CGI will be involved and how the tone will change as the Munster family’s stories are told in an hour format vs. the 1960s CBS series’ half-hour comedy format…
“The Munsters actually do what monsters do: they eat people and they have to live with the ramifications of being monstrous,” Fuller told the site. “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. So any story you can tell on Parenthood and “True Blood,” we can tell. To have Eddie Munster be the starting point for the family — because in the past, when Eddie was born human, they stopped living like monsters because they didn’t want to damage Eddie. You get to this interesting thing with Lily, who’s been hiding who she is for the last 11 years and now has to accept who she is after she’s denied it for so long. It’s those types of emotional stories — yet they’re going out and eating people at the same time.”
Continued inside…
He also talks on bringing in some of the classic Universal monsters — Wolfman, Creature From the Black Lagoon, and if they’ll 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.”
“We have universal monsters, which for me are the fairy tales of my youth,” Fuller continues. “That’s where I grew up, loving The Munsters, 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.”
For those of you unacquanted, Bryan Fuller is a mad genius overflowing with talent. His vision is incredibly dangerous and original, which always translates into either brilliance or a complete disaster. We’re hoping on the former. Bryan Singer directs the pilot starring Eddie Izzard, Charity Wakefield, Mason Cook, Jerry O’Connell and Cheyenne Jackson.
It’s been sixteen years since Freddy Krueger was last seen in the Nightmare on Elm Street reboot movie starring Jackie Earle Haley, with complicated rights issues playing a role in the franchise’s complete and total silence over the past several years. Today, that silence ends.
According to a new report from The Hollywood Reporter this afternoon, “Paramount Pictures has closed a deal for the U.S. rights to the original screenplay of A Nightmare on Elm Street.”
Paramount’s genre label Paramount Primal is behind the upcoming franchise reboot.
THR explains in further detail, “The U.S. rights are being licensed from the Craven estate, which includes Craven’s widow Iya Labunka and Craven’s son Jonathan Craven. The duo will produce the new iteration with Marc Toberoff, the attorney-turned-producer who specializes in copyright law. J.D. Lifshitz and Raphael Margules will executive produce for Paramount Primal.”
“We look forward to bringing the world of Wes Craven’s Nightmare on Elm Street to a new and completely engaged generation of fans,” Iya Labunka said in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter. “We know that Wes would have been thrilled to see how horror is taking its long overdue place in the cultural canon. We can’t wait for all of us to sit together in a dark theatre – around the campfire of today – as the next chapter of the Nightmare story unfolds.”
“We can’t remember a time before we were fans of Wes Craven,” said Lifshitz and Margules. “The fact that Iya and Jonathan have entrusted us with this opportunity to help usher a new story into this world is an honor beyond words. We look forward to working alongside them to bring a terrifying new nightmare to audiences everywhere, and to welcome Freddy home.”
The Elm Street franchise had of course previously had a home at New Line Cinema/Warner Bros., but the Craven Estate was able to regain the rights to the original screenplay. THR notes, “New Line retains the international rights to Nightmare on Elm Street.”
Freddy Krueger’s upcoming return is said to be “set in the world of A Nightmare on Elm Street, based on the original screenplay.” No further details are available at this time.
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