Universal/Blumhouse’s modern take on ‘The Invisible Man’ will become visible two weeks earlier than expected. The reboot was scheduled to open on March 13, 2020, but has been shifted up to February 28. In its old date, the film would have been going up against ‘Godzilla Vs. Kong’. Oddly, its new release date is the same as another Blumhouse movie’s opening– ‘Fantasy Island’ for Sony. Also opening on that date is the Tiffany Haddish comedy ‘Bad Trip’.
‘The Invisible Man’ is currently filming in Australia with director/screenwriter Leigh Whannell. Elisabeth Moss, and Oliver Jackson-Cohen star, along with Storm Reid, Aldis Hodge, Harriet Dyer, and Benedict Hardie.
‘The Invisible Man’ follows Cecilia (Moss), who receives the news of her abusive ex-boyfriend’s suicide. She begins to re-build her life for the better, but her sense of reality is put into question when she begins to suspect her deceased lover is not actually dead.
Moss will play Cecilia, with Jackson-Cohen as this abusive ex-boyfriend, whose name is believed to be Adrian Griffin, “a billionaire sociopath who made his money by developing an invisibility suit for the Department of Defense.” Reid plays the daughter of Hodge’s character. Not much information has been given about this film, but from the sound of things, Hodge’s character is Cecilia’s current lover.
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Universal released its first ‘Invisible Man’ movie in 1933, with Claude Rains in the lead as Jack Griffin. The film was based on the 1897 H.G. Wells novel of the same name. The new movie is believed to incorporate elements of both the original movie and the novel, but will, of course, be in a modern setting. The last film appearance of the Invisible Man was in 1951’s ‘Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man’.
This is the first of what Universal hopes becomes a series of movies collectively called ‘Monster Legacy’. They are being co-produced by Blumhouse, which specializes in low-budget horror hits. Universal previously attempted to launch a new big-budget monster movie series called ‘Dark Universe’, but both attempts to kick it off– 2014’s ‘Dracula Untold’ and 2017’s ‘The Mummy’— were flops. So when Blumhouse offered to take the franchise in a cheaper direction, Universal agreed to try this approach.
‘The Invisible Man’ will now hit theaters on February 28, 2020.
