The works of H.G. Wells have sparked the imaginations of readers and film audiences throughout the past couple of decades, and it’s not hard to see why. His fantastical premises, mixed with enough scientific thought to be grounded in a reality, have provided great imagination fuel which filmmakers have used to adapt several different versions of his greatest works. Now, one such work is going to be resurrected. Prepare yourself for the return of The Invisible Man.
The Tracking Board broke the scoop that Sony is beginning development on their own telling of the classic story, with Lucy Fisher and Douglas Wick being named as the producers shepherding the project into reality. Oddly enough, Wick had previously brought another invisible man into the world via a Sony banner, as he was a producer on the 2000 Kevin Bacon film Hollow Man. So making someone disappear shouldn't be too hard for Wick and his producing partner.
Even stranger is the fact that if you took Hollow Man’s synopsis, and made it into an assuredly PG-13 suspense thriller, you'd have something extremely close to what the following details on the project's approach suggest:
The studio is developing a new spin that will make the Invisible Man the villain of the film, with the audience following the hero that is tasked to hunt him down.
Considering that the original novel, the 1933 Universal classic, and the Kevin Bacon thriller all see our protagonist engage in the typical "descent into madness," this doesn't feel like that new of a spin on the story. Each version of the character seems to go mad and try to use their new found freedom from morals in a plot to create chaos and anarchy - and each scenario sees our invisible man dead in the end. The big difference is that the classic Universal Monsters version of the story tries to redeem our protagonist through death, giving him one last moment to admit that the powers he's discovered are something humanity should not have in their grasp.
Which leads to the obvious wrinkle in the plans of Sony's new, more antagonistic reboot of The Invisible Man: Universal is still developing their own version of the property, which will undoubtedly be at least somewhat based off of the 1933 film. So while Sony's version of the project will have us rooting for Griffin to be taken down by whatever hero is cast to take him down, Universal's version will most likely be a story of misguided science, minimal insanity, and a man's quest to become human again. In other words, the Universal version of The Invisible Man will fit in perfectly with the shared universe that began with Dracula Untold.
For now though, Sony's The Invisible Man project has no set production schedule.
