Hello, everyone! It’s One Of Us’ weekly article series, “The Weekly Wrap-Up.” Covering everything from film announcements to comic books, “The Weekly Wrap-Up” ensures that the biggest stories of the week are analyzed and discussed by our team of writers. This week we cover the first trailer for Victor Frankenstein, Nintendo’s efforts to stay relevant and the rumors surrounding George Miller possibly directing Man of Steel 2.
Victor Frankenstein Trailer
Directed by Paul McGuigan (Lucky Number Slevin) and written by Max Landis (American Ultra), Victor Frankenstein follows radical scientist Victor Frankenstein (James McAvoy), his equally brilliant protégé, Igor Strausman (Daniel Radcliffe), and their groundbreaking research into immortality. When Victor’s experiments go too far, only Igor can bring his friend back from the brink of madness and save him from his monstrous creation.
Yes, we have yet another retelling of the Frankenstein story. This time, 20th Century Fox seems adamant about turning the classic Mary Shelley novel into a blockbuster action-adventure akin to Guy Ritchie’s bombastic and CGI-ridden Sherlock Holmes series. The relationship between McAvoy’s Victor and Radcliffe’s Igor (sadly, not pronounced eye-gor) is in sharp contrast to past incarnations of the duo’s previous relationships in earlier films, books and comics. There’s still no confirmation as to whether the movie will feature a Broadway-style dance number.
Victor Frankenstein will shamble its way to theatres November 25, 2015.
Nintendo Reconsidering Film Adaptations
After the commercial failure of the Wii U and the backlash Nintendo received for its poor show at this year’s Nintendo Direct Conference at E3, the hardware and software developer is in direr straits to stay relevant among unsatisfied gamers and the general public. In May, Nintendo and Universal Studios had announced plans that they were developing Nintendo theme-parks at Universal Parks and Resorts. This was at first viewed as a strange move by Nintendo, a company that has earned the infamous reputation of being quite guarded with its characters and franchises. However, theme parks may not be the only thing Nintendo is considering to promote its brand.
During a recent interview with Fortune, Nintendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto, a general manager and video game producer/director for the Japanese company, spoke about why Nintendo had not pursued film adaptations of their properties for the last two decades and why they are considering it now.
“We’ve had, over the years, a number of people who have come to us and said ‘Why don’t we make a movie together—or we make a movie and you make a game and we’ll release them at the same time? Because games and movies seem like similar mediums, people’s natural expectation is we want to take our games and turn them into movies. … I’ve always felt video games, being an interactive medium, and movies, being a passive medium, mean the two are quite different.”
“As we look more broadly at what is Nintendo’s role as an entertainment company, we’re starting to think more and more about how movies can fit in with that—and we’ll potentially be looking at things like movies in the future.”
At this point it would be a smart move on Nintendo’s part to expand into different mediums to promote itself. Though the company has been producing gimmicky, underpowered hardware for the last decade and a number of shovel-ware titles, Nintendo still has an incredible legacy in the game industry, and capitalizing on that legacy with animated movies could prove to be very successful.
George Miller Rumored to Direct Man Of Steel 2?
Hot off the acclaim and success of returning to a long dead franchise, can this older Aussie save a relatively new one? In a recent episode of the web series Popcorn Talk, MovieTalk host and director of the documentary The Death of Superman Lives: What Happened? Jon Schnepp claimed that Mad Max Fury Road director George Miller is slated to direct the upcoming sequel to the 2013’s Man of Steel. This would be the second DC Comics related production Miller would be involved with following his failed attempt at a Justice League film in 2007, which would have seen DJ Conrona done the cape and “S” symbol.
Even before Fury Road hit the screens, I’ve always thought Miller was a fascinating director. He’s taken in projects that range from the bizarre post apocalyptic action of the Mad Max films to the sincere heart of Babe. Both could definitely be showcased in a Superman film, one that takes advantage of the core of that character’s optimism and struggle to deal with his power. Unfortunately, I don’t feel like Warner Bros would be for such a depiction of the character given what Man of Steel started for the character and the universe. Plus, I honestly don’t want to see Miller go from an expert example of action filmmaking to something as underwhelming as a sequel to Man of Steel. I’d rather see Miller do something he wants to do or even just close out his career on the near perfection of Fury Road. Either will probably give him more of an opportune send of than a gritty superman film in my eyes. But that’s just me.
