Move over Guillermo del Toro, there’s a new take on the Frankenstein coming to town. According to Variety, 20th Television and FX are close to closing a deal to bring a spinoff series based on Mel Brooks’s beloved film Young Frankenstein to life. Though we don’t have any plot particulars yet, the series, titled Very Young Frankenstein, will be set in the world of the iconic 1974 film, commonly referred to as one of the best comedies of all time. In it, Victor Frankenstein’s grandson Frederick (Gene Wilder) inherits his grandfather’s Transylvanian castle and picks up his life’s work of bringing a dead body back to life. This isn’t the first time Young Frankenstein has been adapted to another medium. A stage musical version of the iconic comedy ran for two years on Broadway from 2007 to 2009.
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Brooks, at the age of 98, will executive produce along with partner Kevin Salter. Joining Brooks and Salter is a creative team with the resumes to do the original film justice. All alumni of the FX hit series What We Do in the Shadows. That show, which recently concluded a six-season run and follows four vampires living on Staten Island, was based on a previous film version that became an indie darling when it premiered in 2014. Visionary Taika Waititi, the godfather of both the Shadows movie and series, along with the director of juggernaut Thor: Ragnarok, will direct Very Young Frankenstein‘s pilot. Shadows series writer and executive producer Stefani Robinson serves as the new Frankenstein‘s writer and showrunner. Rounding out the trio of creators is Michael Gruskoff, one of the producers on the original What We Do in the Shadows film.
Very Young Frankenstein Stellar Team to Make the Series Stand Out From the Original
While we’re usually wary of spinoffs and sequels after a decades-long break, Brooks seems to be one of the few Hollywood power players doing it right. Like with the upcoming Spaceballs sequel and co-writers Josh Gad, Benji Samit, and Dan Hernandez, Brooks has found younger partners to bring his most beloved works into the present day with a fresh take while honoring the material. Waititi, Robinson, and Gruskoff not only have the right pedigree for this new take on Young Frankenstein, they also have sharp, distinct comedic voices that differ from Brooks’s signature style of humor. Waititi’s brand of quirky, irreverent humor is now unmistakable to modern audiences, and it contrasts against Brooks’s broad, neurotic style of funny, which will allow for Very Young Frankenstein to feel new and fresh in all the right ways.
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Furthermore, the TV show spinoff What We Do in the Shadows itself could have come across as derivative and old hat. Instead, writers like Robinson, who penned some of the series’ best episodes for the four seasons she was in the writers’ room, took the film’s DNA and created something that stood on its own. Shadows did a masterful job of making us fall in love with their new cast of characters as well as balancing cameos and callbacks to the movie the series was based on.
Though lightning rarely strikes twice, it could very well do so with Very Young Frankenstein, especially having Waititi, Robinson, and Gruskoff at the helm.
