Despite some seriously mixed reviews, Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland scored big at the box office and won a couple of little golden men at the Oscars. So you can imagine that studios would want to encourage him to find other classic tales to adapt. He’s already got a take on Sleeping Beauty’s Maleficent bubbling away in his development cauldron and now Warner Bros. has secured the director to develop The Hunchback of Notre Dame with Josh Brolin.
The actor is actually the one spearheading the film’s early stages, which will see the1831 Victor Hugo novel adapted by Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows writers Kieran and Michele Mulroney.
It’ll be a challenge to find something fresh as the story – which sees deformed bell-bothered Quasimodo falling tragically in love with beautiful gypsy girl Esmerelda – has been brought to the screen many times before, including one in 1905 and the 1997 hunch-off between Disney’s ‘toon take and an action-orientated TV movie version with Mandy Patinkin and Salma Hayek. But, as the Heat Vision blog points out, the darker themes – repression, hatred, revenge and a lonely individual falling in love – are seemingly a perfect match for Burton’s sensibilities.
We’re frankly more surprised that Warners would want to ugly up Josh Brolin again after Jonah Hex tanked, but at least we’re pretty certain the studio won’t be hiring Megan Fox as Esmerelda…