Since picking up an Outstanding Miniseries Emmy for his bold reimagining of the Coen Brothers’ classic crime caper Fargo, Noah Hawley has shown no sign that he’ll slow down any time soon. He’s currently setting up the second series of Fargo for FX, and Sony has set Hawley to script and produce an adaptation of his book Before the Fall. Now, we’re hearing that Hawley has become attached to another intriguing project – a big-screen revival for one of Universal’s classic movie monsters.
No word yet on which character Hawley will be working on, but Universal has tasked him with penning a script that will bring one of the classic movie monsters into the modern era. News of Hawley’s involvement originally came from Deadline, which briefly wrote:
“Hawley, while readying another season of Fargo, is separately scripting an untitled project at Universal that will be part of that studio’s classic monster franchise push.”
Alex Kurtzman and Chris Morgan are the two brains behind this planned franchise revival, which will bring the monsters together into a “connected universe.” First, we’ll see a new Mummy movie, which Jon Spaihts (Prometheus, Doctor Strange) is penning for Kurtzman to direct. According to Kurtzman, some movie monsters are big enough to carry their own films, while others will serve as supporting players. Given the Mummy’s reputation as one of Universal’s most popular movie monsters, it doesn’t come as much of a surprise that the studio wants to start there.
The synopsis for the new Mummy simply reads:
A legend that has endured since the dawn of man is reborn in THE MUMMY, Universal Pictures’ all-new epic action-adventure. THE MUMMY is conceived with dramatic intensity by an imaginative creative team led by director/producer Alex Kurtzman and producers Roberto Orci, Chris Morgan (Fast & Furious series, Wanted) and Sean Daniel (The Mummy trilogy, The Best Man series). Jon Spaihts (Prometheus) wrote the screenplay, and Bobby Cohen executive produces.
It’s anyone’s guess as to which project Hawley has become attached to, seeing as the Universal catalog includes a huge range of characters. Such famed monsters as Frankenstein’s Monster, Dracula, the Invisible Man, the Creature from the Black Lagoon and the Wolf Man are all expected to get their own reboots in due time. Hawley would be a good choice for almost any of those aforementioned monsters, so we’re hoping that we hear further details on his involvement in the near future.