This could be good. Gold Circle Films have picked up the rights to the 2004 fantasy adventure novel The Arcanum after Miramax’s rights deal expired says Variety. No director is attached as of yet, though the book’s author has penned the script.
“The Arcanum,” Wheeler’s debut novel, is set in 1919 and follows the titular secret society comprising the era’s leading occult investigators — Arthur Conan Doyle, Harry Houdini, H.P. Lovecraft and Marie Laveau — as they battle demons descending on New York City, including a serial killer of angels.
I’ve said it before but it’s worth repeating. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen was one of the biggest f*** up’s of recent years. Actually the same goes with Van Helsing also. These movies had great concepts and a whole wealth of potential with what they could have done but they all totally messed up with their execution.
Gold Circle are hoping that The Arcanum can be turned into a series franchise but of course they thought that with “Gentlemen also”.
2 Comments
I don’t know why everyone dumps on League and Van Helsing, especially Van Helsing. My ONLY gripe with League was that it lagged a little in some places. I had no compaints with Van Helsing’s story at all.
But for some reason it gets ripped on. What “potential” did VH have that it didn’t exploit? Perhaps League could be accused of that, but again, what would you have preferred to see and how would it have been different/better than what they did?
Van Helsing’s CGI work was terrible. Here you have legendary characters who have been the subject of such dramatic performances from icons like Bela Lugosi, Lou Chaney and Boris Karloff but in Van Helsing.. they were subjected to awful computer animation.
They ended up being not so much characters but just outlines of monstrous icons.
I loved the atmosphere that Sommers brought to the film and it’s something he did really well in The Mummy but it just felt really flat to me. Hugh Jackman was cast really well but the story I couldn’t get into in what was an overkill FX film. Especially in the final act.
Van Helsing if they wanted to use the Universal Horror monsters, should have been more about character and soul, and less about the visuals.
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen was awful, and had mostly the same problems above. Character development was shoddy and the flick just bored me to death.
Less humour… more story please.