The Hollywood Reporter carried the story that Skydance Prods., Dark Horse Entertainment and producer Mark Gordon will turn the upcoming Dark Horse comic The Strange Case of Hyde into a feature film.
Written by screenwriter Cole Haddon (THIEVES OF BAGDAD), the as-yet-unseen comic book will debut at Comic Con this weekend.
It’s a not an adaption of Robert Louis Stevenson’s 1886 novella, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. This version is a different take on the Jekyll & Hyde mythos that will make the dual character “the center of a Victorian-era action-adventure that sees him go head-to-head against a historical villain.”
Sounds a little bit like THE LEAGE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMAN’s Hyde— more the movie version than the graphic novel’s.
If the idea is to make Mr. Hyde into a transformational superhero, that’s been done before, too. There was minor golden-age superhero called The Terror that used that shtick.
One of Stan Lee’s main inspirations for The Hulk was the Jekyll/Hyde idea, suped-up for the atom age.
The Francis Ford Coppola (DRACULA)-produced DR. JEKYLL & MR. HYDE (1999) starred Adam Baldwin as a heroic Jekyll who transformed into Mr. Hyde to track down his wife’s killers in the Far East.
But the Hyde as hero angle—if that indeed is what this might be—is a workable idea, and might make for a fun comic and movie.