Concept artists hired for sequel
Shortly after rocking our socks off with his Comic-Con trailer for Rogue Pictures’ The Unborn – featuring an assortment of surreal nightmare imagery, from dogs wearing human masks to spider-walking creepy contortionists – writer-director David Goyer offered ShockTillYouDrop.com an update on The Invisible Man, his sequel to H.G. Wells’ novel and the 1933 film.
“I’m writing it right now,” Goyer assures us. “I got Universal to hire some conceptual artists for me so they’re working tandem with me writing. The main guy is Jamie Rama, Aaron Sims did some pieces too. Rama is a great conceptual artist who worked on Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, he’s one of the primary conceptual artists who worked on the Bat suits.”
Picking up months after the events of Wells’ novel (it’s a period piece), Goyer says his take is loaded with historical figures including William Melville, head of Scotland Yard and the founder of MI6. “He instituted fingerprinting and was friends with Harry Houdini. He’s where the ‘M’ comes from in MI6. In my story, he’s the one who captures the Invisible Man in my story and says, ‘Listen, we want to turn you into a secret agent and send you into Imperial Russia.'”
Goyer describes the film as a big re-imagining, a story that came to him while locked away in a resort writing The Unborn. Looking for something to read, he came upon a tattered copy of Wells’ Invisible Man, re-read it and subsequently hatched his idea.
“I went back to Universal and I asked them if they were doing anything with the character. They said ‘no’ so I told them I had this take,” he says. “Universal gets it’s meant to be like what Steven Sommers did with The Mummy. It’s a big world. Very steampunk. They’re doing the The Wolfman and trying to do the Creature from the Black Lagoon, they’re really interested in this. The good news is Rogue is also Universal, and Rogue is really happy with The Unborn , so I think I have to really f**k up the script for them to not want to make it.”
Source: Ryan Rotten
