It's getting on for a year ago now that Jekyll, a modern-day version of Robert Louis Stevenson's classic The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde was announced as in the works.
Keanu Reeves was set to star, Revolutionary Road's Justin Haythe was writing the script, and Bronson's Nicholas Winding Refn was in talks to direct. Two thirds of that line up is still intact, but Refn's departure for **Drive left a vacancy behind the camera. A vacancy that Dennis Iliadis has just filled.
The Greek director of last year's just-about-okay (until the very end) **L****ast House on the Left **remake joins a film whose details are still very much under wraps. But we have an inkling that, despite whatever amazing cosmetic changes are taking place behind closed doors, the film will involve Kenuwee Head playing a scientist called Jekyll, who comes up with a formula for separating good from evil and ends up plagued by the unforseen and increasingly uncontrollable consequences.
This is one of three potential Jekyll and Hyde projects in various stages of planning, with Guillermo Del Toro vaguely attached to one (alongside his other trillion works-in-progress), and Abel Ferrara struggling to get another underway (50 Cent still seems to be attached to star in that one; Forest Whitaker bowed out late last year). While those are in flux though, Jekyll seems finally to be lurching ahead. More news as we get it.