Fake News: Universal Studios announces its upcoming CyberReality 2031 releases- the 100th Anniversary Celebration revisualizations of Bram Stoker’s authentic Dracula, starring Bela Lugosi, Edward Van Sloan, Dwight Frye, Frances Dade, and Helen Chandler, and of Mary Shelley’s authentic Frankenstein, starring Karloff, Colin Clive, Mae Clarke, Edward Van Sloan, Dwight Frye (Captain Walton?), Ernest Thesiger (Krempe), O.P. Heggie, and Valerie Hobson (Justine Moritz). These will be ultra-CGI book-faithful movies using the original casts, with added period actors for role like Dracula’s Arthur Holmwood (Leslie Howard perhaps?) and Quincey Morris (??? j/k John Wayne???)
Assuming they can be technically done and even aesthetically done well, should they be done? Why or why not? And let’s assume for sake of argument that generous compensation by made to all actors’ descendants is given. They even meet the Lugosi family’s price :D!
The number of people who would be willing to pay for this is nowhere enough to make a profit. No one under 50 would care And few would even know who the actors were. And if the wanted to see the original actors, they’ld watch the original movie.
I’d far prefer to see movies made of these classics that were as close as possible to the original stories. Why perpetuate the tropes and stereotypes that originated in these (wonderful!) old movies?
If you must make re-makes that perpetuate the stereotypes – why not use new actors? Playing Frankenstein’s Monster badly isn’t that much of a challenge! Peter Boyle did it brilliantly in Young Frankenstein. Let a new generation of actors “camp it up” with bad eastern European accents and over-the-top fright-take scenes. “It lives! It lives! By Christ, it lives!”
All that said…sure! Do the remakes the way you suggest! I’ll buy a set! It isn’t what I want most…but it’ll be good clean fun.
I doubt if it would sell enough tickets, disks, and downloads to make it interesting to the studio. Personally, I think it would be an interesting experiment.
I would like to see them take the cast of the 1973 The Three Musketeers, and film The Viscomte de Bragelonne.
Sherlock Holmes, based on the William Gillette play, with Basil Rathbone as Holmes, Colin Blakely as Watson, and Lionel Atwill as Moriarty.
Atom Man versus Superman, but with a better script and special effects. (Kirk Alyn as Superman, Lyle Talbot as Lex Luthor.)
Arsenic and Old Lace, with Boris Karloff playing Jonathan Brewster.
When I read Lord of the Rings, I often visualize Gregory Peck as Aragorn and Peter Lorre as Gollum.