You know the old joke, “What do you get when you cross the eleventh Doctor and Young Hercules?” No? That’s because it’s not a joke, people. It’s real life news.
According to Variety, Matt Smith, the eleventh and current incarnation of Britain’s cult hero Doctor Who, is coming to America and then heading to the underworld for How to Catch a Monster, the directorial debut from Ryan Gosling - who is producing the film under his Phantasma Films banner. The movie is described as a dark, surreal fantasy noir about a city slowly turning into an underworld, and is centered on a single mother and her two children, one of which finds a secret road that leads to an underwater town. A creepy fantasy that isn’t based on a book that also doesn’t have Tim Burton’s name anywhere near it? I’m totally down for this.
Smith joins a cast that includes the recently announced Eva Mendes, as well as Christina Hendricks, who has been attached to the film for a few months now. Actual production on the film is set to start at some time in the spring, so expect further casting to be announced soon. The children are always either the best or the worst parts of movies like this, so hopefully the casting process remains solid.
The film role will be a new experience for Smith - who previously in the dark sci-fi romance Womb, and the TV drama Party Animals - as he’s never appeared in an American feature before. And he couldn’t have picked a better film to hop onto, as Gosling’s popularity and critical acclaim has remained on a sturdy plateau for years (though his last film, Gangster Squad could have been called How to Catch a Cold given audiences’ negative reactions to it).
