Universal and Imagine To Develop Larry Doyle’s Go Mutants!
Universal Pictures has picked up screen rights to Larry Doyle’s novel Go Mutants!, with Imagine Entertainment head Brian Grazer to produce. Doyle will also be writing the script. Go Mutants! is a teen comedy/adventure set in a high school where all of the tropes from classic 1950s alien invasion movies came true. Years later, the children of those mutant creatures have assimilated among the other kids.
Doyle said the book and movie invites cameos from ’50s fright fixtures such as Gort, the robot from The Day the Earth Stood Still, or even the creature from the Black Lagoon.
Universal and Imagine bought the book on the basis of an outline, and Doyle will finish the novel this summer and work on the script at the same time. The book will be published by Harper Collins next summer.
I always think it is funny when studios pick up a book that isn’t even finished yet. I mean what if they read the ending and are like what the crap? That being said the premise is quite neat, as a fan of all the old monster movies and the 1950s classic films, it will be cool how they transpose that into a teen high-school comedy. This seems a lot like The Munsters meets Sky High by way of Marvel’s The Runaways. I see why Universal is keen in picking the film up as it will use a lot of their old monster properties in plot which is good way to re-enhance those brands to a new generation of moviegoers.
Doyle has a rather interesting background. He wrote the scripts for Looney Tunes: Back in Action and Duplex and there is also an adaptation of his 2007 debut novel I Love You, Beth Cooper set for release from Fox Searchlight starring Hayden Panettiere and Paul Rust. In the TV world he has written multiple episodes of both The Simpsons and MTV’s classic Beavis & Butthead.
