Prolific creature designer Aaron Sims (Clash of the Titans, Percy Jackson, Wolverine, Green Lantern) has been updating Shock Til You Drop about the status of a couple of pipeline projects: namely James Wan's take on videogame Castlevania, and the long-gestating David Goyer re-think of The Invisible Man.
Castlevania, he says, has been back-burnered while Saw-director Wan gets on with Insidious (aka the Astral, aka **The Further), but locations have been scouted in Romania, and work has begun on "a Medusa, and some vampires [with] a unique quality to them that falls into James' style". So with Titans and Percy, that's three Medusas in the same year! Must be tough to keep them distinct.
The videogame series has gone through endless permutations since its debut on the NES in the 1980s, and Sims says that Wan and co. are well aware of the franchise's giant fanbase. With that in mind, the filmmakers are trying to keep the project as indie as possible ("it's about trying to find the right investors"), the better to avoid studio interference. But it's hard to believe game-studio Konami won't have a major say in the proceedings.
Back in Studio World though, Sims says Universal are "really on board" with The Invisible Man, although "they have the property so they figure they might as well do something with it" sounds a bit half-arsed to us. Sims is scratching his head about how to make some new and fresh invisibility effects (since Hollow Man already did the gradual-skin-downwards schtick) and tests are ongoing.
David Goyer's take on HG Wells' see-through character reportedly involves a secret agent in a steampunk imperial Russia. We'll have more news on it and Castlevania as and when.