Shakespeare, Poe, Brontë and Shelley. Parlaying their television success for feature film opportunities, helmer Coky Giedroyc (AMC’s “The Killing” and Showtime’s “Penny Dreadful”) will make her sophomore feature film (almost a decade and a half since here debut) and is being joined by Sophie Turner (“Game of Thrones” fame), Taissa Farmiga (“American Horror Story” fame) and Jeremy Irvine (The Railway Man) on Mary Shelley’s Monster. Deadline reports that Rose Ganguzza (Kill Your Darlings), Branded Pictures Ent.’ J Todd Harris (The Family Tree) & Marc Marcum and relatively new Damon Lane are producing with filming to begin later this year in the UK and Malta.
Gist: Scripted by Deborah Baxtrom, this tracks the young writer as she writes her seminal novel and is drawn into a Faustian bargain with her own “monster” of an alter ego, who offers literary fame at a desperate personal cost. Turner is cast as Shelley, Irvine as Percy Shelley and Farmiga as Mary’s stepsister Claire Clairmont.
Worth Noting: Pointed out by the trade, Shelley first published her Gothic horror classic Frankenstein anonymously at the age of 21.
Do We Care?: Proposed by Rose Ganguzza as a “19th century teenage heroine told in a visceral, sexy, contemporary way”, we’ll approach this as we do with all period pics about beloved authors — a cautioned curiosity.
