Versus, crossovers and shared universes

With Marvel's impressive wave of success in theaters, it seems everyone wants to jump on the "shared universe" bandwagon, as if it was some kind of new thing. DC of course launched a Batman v Superman movie, followed by bigger crossover stories like Justice League. Universal announced a slate of monster movies set in the same universe, starting with a Tom Cruise-starring Mummy, and we even get a new King Kong movie as an introduction to an upcoming King Kong vs Godzilla. Hell, rumor has it that we will also see a Men in Black / 21 Jump Street crossover in the near future!

But none of this is really groundbreaking. At all. The original King Kong vs Godzilla was made in 1962, and was only the third episode in the Godzilla saga. Universal Monsters practically invented the concept of a shared cinematic universe in the 1940s, starting with the amazing crossover Frankenstein meets the Wolf Man. And even Marvel tried its hand at it as early as the 1980s, with the special episodes of the Incredible Hulk, co-starring Daredevil and Thor.

TV series have also been doing this for a long time: long before Flash and Arrow teamed up, viewers could watch The Pretender's Jarod visiting the Profiler squad, or Chuck Norris lending a hand to Sammo Hung in a Martial Law / Walker Texas Ranger crossover. And in the 60s, Batman and Robin crossed paths on-screen with the Green Hornet and Kato!

In fact, you don’t even have to be very old to remember a couple of relatively high-profile crossovers that hit the screens in the 2000s. Freddy vs Jason had been announced for a few years when it was finally released in 2003, and the clash of boogeymen was an entertaining revival for both franchises at once. Then in 2004, we got Alien vs Predator, followed three years later by its sequel Requiem. They kept the Aliens and Predator sagas alive during the long gaps between their respective official episodes.

But crossovers were invented way before film and TV entered our lives. Readers have seen Arsène Lupin meet Sherlock Holmes, or rather Herlock Sholmes (the name was slightly changed at Conan Doyle's request) in a couple of Maurice Leblanc’s novels. The encounter was brought to the screen in a German film serial as early as 1910, where the detective became Sherlock Holmes again.

Long before that, Ivanhoe joined forces with Robin Hood in Walter Scott’s novel Ivanhoe, and we can trace back the idea of crossovers to Homer’s tales of Gods and Heroes. Greek mythology was one of the first known cases of shared universes, with Zeus and Hera showing up in all kinds of stories – so it should come to no surprise that Italy would come up with a movie called Hercules, Samson and Ulysses in the 1960s!

Of course, Sherlock Holmes and Frankenstein have also had their share of cinematic crossovers: the detective met Jack the Ripper on screen twice, and Frankenstein was confronted to Dracula, Santos, Jesse James and numerous other characters. But Sherlock Holmes vs Frankenstein? Not yet. We're working on it, remember?

May 2d: St. Boris's Day

Today, we celebrate people with the name Boris. But isn't it ironic that the most famous Boris of all is actually called... William?! Boris Karloff, whom we all know for his portrayal of Frankenstein's monster in the first three Universal movies, was born William Henry Pratt in 1887, and there was nothing russian about him. A bit indian on his paternal grandmother's side, but no reason for him to choose Boris Karloff as his stage name.

Before he became an icon of horror, he was an intimidating supporting actor in stage plays and a truckload of silent films. He was already 32 when he first appeared on screen. Finding these early performances can be a bit tricky, but you should be able to find a copy of Tarzan and the Golden Lion (1927) somewhere.

In 1931, James Whale directed a lavish screen version of Frankenstein, which was not adapted from the book but from a successful stage play. The scientist was played by Colin Clive, but the creature was embodied by an mysterious uncredited actor, whose name was only revealed in the closing credits. Boris Karloff became a star overnight, and returned of course in The Bride of Frankenstein (1935), Son of Frankenstein with Basil Rathbone and Bela Lugosi (1939), House of Frankenstein (1944, where Karloff didn't play the monster but a Dr Gustav Niemann), but also played Fu Manchu, Mr Wong (a Fu Manchu ripoff), the Mummy Imhotep, various mad scientists and a bunch of villains who antagonize Dick Tracy and Charlie Chan.

In 1953, the golden age of black & white horror was almost over, and Karloff only played Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde for laughs, opposite Abbott & Costello. In 1958, at a time where Hammer Films was taking over gothic horror, he played Baron Frankenstein himself in a weak movie called Frankenstein 1970, where he used body parts from a film crew to create his monster.

In the 60s, he became mostly a guest star in TV shows like I Spy and The Wild Wild West, but he also returned to Frankenstein in a weird little movie called Mad Monster Party, where he provided the voice of Baron Boris von Frankenstein (!)

Boris Karloff died in 1971, but he's very fondly remembered by classic horror fans, along with Bela Lugosi and Lon Chaney Jr. However, it seems that these three never shared the same bond as their successors Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee and Vincent Price.

Boris is the name of the dog in Sherlock Holmes vs Frankenstein, and I admit to it being a not-so-subtle wink to Karloff!

2012-2013: Doubting, waiting, rewriting

At the end of the summer 2012, things were starting to slow down. We were getting messages from very interesting people wondering about the project, like Oscar-winning makeup artist Dave Elsey (Star Wars ep III, Mission Impossible, X-Men First Class - he won the Oscar for Wolfman, together with Rick Baker), who said he would love to be involved. But what more was there to do for Sherlock Holmes vs Frankenstein, until funding would come together? So I took some time for other projects. First, I wrote a script called The Werewolf Mummy, an adventure/horror story set during the crusades. Jean-Noël and I also had a pet project: a film version of Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis, so I worked on developing that script too. And of course, I started working on Jane Clark's movie Slate & Kelly, a buddy cop story set in Paris.

By the end of 2012, I was worried to realize that the company had been in existence for one year, and Sherlock Holmes vs Frankenstein was still not happening. I started to think that maybe we had aimed too high, too fast, and maybe a microbudget film would be a good way to climb our way up to a serious budget. So I put the first hand to a script called House of VHS, which was designed to use only one location (a house), a supernatural menace (VHS) and a total cast of no more than six characters.

2013

Berlin 2013

During that time, Parkland Pictures and I were discussing the script for Sherlock Holmes vs Frankenstein, and it became clear that it could use a real rewrite. To work on it, producer John Cairns brought in a seasoned writer called Stephen Marians, who used to be a production and writing partner of actor Simon Ward (Peter Cushing's reluctant assistant in Hammer's Frankenstein must be destroyed). Stephen came up with his own version of the script, that I was able to read right after the Berlin Film Market, in March 2013. Then we spent a weekend in London, with Stephen and the Parkland people, examining page by page his version and mine, and sorting out what to keep in each – and what to add, change, etc. I went home with a pile of notes, and assembled the new and improved version of the script.

The final version came together during Cannes, in May. During that same festival, I had a few good meetings about the project, and in June, I went on to pitch it to finance people thanks to a selective program run by a group called Peacefulfish. What I heard there could be summarized as: “sounds great, but what have you done before, where's your first feature film?” Well, luckily enough, my first feature happened to be on its way.