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One of the more highly anticipated pilots is NBC’s forthcoming “The Munsters” reboot, “Mockingbird Lane“, which is getting a colorful, modern transformation to the small screen from “Pushing Daisies” and “Dead Like Me” creator Bryan Fuller.
The Hollywood Reporter caught up with Fuller at Comic-Con to discuss how “Mockingbird Lane” could do for NBC and Universal’s library of monsters what Once Upon a Time has done with its bank of Disney characters, how CGI will be involved and how the tone will change as the Munster family’s stories are told in an hour format vs. the 1960s CBS series’ half-hour comedy format…
“The Munsters actually do what monsters do: they eat people and they have to live with the ramifications of being monstrous,” Fuller told the site. “It’s like grounding it in a reality because the half-hour was a sitcom, we saw the monsters: they were monsters on the outside and weren’t monsters on the inside. For us, they’re monsters outside and inside, and we get to double our story. So any story you can tell on Parenthood and “True Blood,” we can tell. To have Eddie Munster be the starting point for the family — because in the past, when Eddie was born human, they stopped living like monsters because they didn’t want to damage Eddie. You get to this interesting thing with Lily, who’s been hiding who she is for the last 11 years and now has to accept who she is after she’s denied it for so long. It’s those types of emotional stories — yet they’re going out and eating people at the same time.”
He also talks on bringing in some of the classic Universal monsters — Wolfman, Creature From the Black Lagoon, and if they’ll be live-action or CGI. “The Creature from the Black Lagoon will be like [1988's] Splash, Too: When he’s wet he’s the Gillman. That’s one of the best makeup effects — prosthetics — that anybody has done, that monster costume. And when he’s dry, he’s a handsome guy.”
“We have universal monsters, which for me are the fairy tales of my youth,” Fuller continues. “That’s where I grew up, loving The Munsters, The Wolfman, Frankenstein, Dracula, the Metaluna monster from Silent Earth and the Mole People. I would love to rope in all of those characters from those stories, as well as get the Cat People and get those types of things. But we can’t just do Monster of the Week; they have to have a reason for being in the story — an emotional capacity — for us to interact with their characters.”
For those of you unacquanted, Bryan Fuller is a mad genius overflowing with talent. His vision is incredibly dangerous and original, which always translates into either brilliance or a complete disaster. We’re hoping on the former. Bryan Singer directs the pilot starring Eddie Izzard, Charity Wakefield, Mason Cook, Jerry O’Connell and Cheyenne Jackson.
