frankenstein

One of the cool things about Mary Shelley's Frankenstein being public domain is that anyone can do whatever they want with the property. One of the frightening things about Mary Shelley's Frankenstein being public domain is that anyone can do whatever they want with the property.

Right on the heels of The Wolfman's strong opening weekend, Variety reports that producers Ralph Winter and Terry Botwick want to take a crack at the famous story. Don't expect Victorian England though...they're going modern, adapting a book series written by Diet Stephen King himself, the one and only Dean Koontz. The plot?

"Project places the doctor -- a socially prominent and successful businessman -- and his super-human original creation Deucalion in modern-day New Orleans. The story centers on a pair of street-smart detectives who encounter Deucalion while investigating a murder, leading them to a bizarre array of "engineered" humans."

I knew that Koontz had written himself a Frankenstein book, but I had no idea this was a series, with the fourth novel being published this summer (out of a planned six). I also have no intention of ever reading them unless you can change my mind. Go on. I dare you.

Han Solo as a experimental research scientist? In Extraordinary Measures, which opens wide tomorrow, Harrison Ford plays Dr. Robert Stonehill, a medical researcher seeking a cure for a life-threatening muscular disease. Though the film is inspired by the true story of John Crowley (played by Brendan Fraser) and his family, Stonehill is a composite of several doctors. As portrayed by Ford, the good doctor is strong-willed, hard-working, and ultimately heroic. Han Solo's cheeky bravado occasionally shines through in Ford's defiant countenance, though the sullen, oft-irritated facade of Rick Deckard (Blade Runner) is more often on view in Dr. Stonehill's bearing.

Not all experiments have happy endings, of course, and not all research scientists are heroic, especially in science fiction movies. When researchers on the cutting edge of science make mistakes, the results can be catastrophic. Here are the top ten sci-fi experiments gone wrong -- the movie edition.

1. The Fly (1986)
Seth Brundle (Jeff Goldblum) has made incredible strides toward a working teleportation system, which could be the invention of the century. But it's not until after he meets Veronica Quaife (Geena Davis) that he dares to experiment with a living creature: first a baboon, then himself. If only he had noticed the tiny winged insect in one of the experimental pods ... David Cronenberg's version of the Vincent Price-starring shocker is a character-driven thriller that feels like it's teleported into your nervous system. "Be afraid. Be very afraid."

Don't ask me how Guillermo del Toro works on four hundred projects at once, because it always amazes me to see how much he's got going on, and it's also inspiring to see a filmmaker that passionate about creating and conceptualizing and coming up with awesome new things for the world and his fans. Guillermo del Toro is exactly the kind of guy we want handling some of these more fanboy-ish properties because he's a true geek -- and while other filmmakers are using their celebrity status to attend parties at the Playboy mansion, this mofo is designing creatures and drawing in his sketchbook and working hard to please us.

Round of applause before we move on ...

In a new interview on BBC Radio, Del Toro let loose that he's already cast friend (and collaborator) Doug Jones as Frankenstein in his planned adaptation of the classic tale, and will begin testing things like make-up within the next few weeks -- though he admits (to Digital Spy) that he's "not in a hurry" and is perfectly fine shooting the film five or six years from now. "You have one shot in your lifetime at these things and I don't want to do it the wrong way."

As far as The Hobbit goes, Del Toro confirmed to BBC that Ian McKellan is back, as well as Andy Serkis and Hugo Weaving, all of whom will be reprising their roles from the original trilogy. The writer-director also confirmed that there will only be two Hobbit movies, not three, which is a fact that was revealed earlier this year.

News on Del Toro's other projects after the jump.