Warner Bros eyeing H.G. Wells novel “The Island Of Dr. Moreau”

PanARMENIAN.Net - Warner Bros is going back to The Island Of Dr. Moreau.

Accorrdng to Deadline, the studio and Appian Way partners Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Davisson Killoran have set Lee Shipman & Brian McGreevy to pen a contemporary re-imagining of H.G. Wells’ classic novel. The intention is to make it a sci-fi film with a topical ecological message. Appian Way will produce with Mad Hatter Entertainment’s Michael Connolly.

The 1896 Wells book has been adapted for the screen several times with iconic participants: the 1932 film Island Of Lost Souls with Charles Laughton and Bela Lugosi, the 1977 pic with Burt Lancaster and Michael York, and the 1996 New Line pic that starred Marlon Brando and Val Kilmer. That last version didn’t fare well.

The writers and Connolly are coming off of a successful run at Netflix, as their show Hemlock Grove got two Emmy noms. Series is based on McGreevy’s novel.

The The Island of Doctor Moreau author H. G. Wells called the novel "an exercise in youthful blasphemy". The text of the novel is the narration of Edward Prendick, a shipwrecked man rescued by a passing boat who is left on the island home of Doctor Moreau, who creates human-like beings from animals via vivisection. The novel deals with a number of philosophical themes, including pain and cruelty, moral responsibility, human identity, and human interference with nature.

H.G. Wells was a firm believer that the events that occurred within The Island of Doctor Moreau are entirely possible should it be ever tested outside the confines of science fiction in literature.