At this rate there won’t be anyone in Downton Abbey who doesn’t have a burgeoning movie career (or in the case of Maggie Smith and Shirley Maclaine, an incredible, decades-spanning one). Now Lady Sybil Branson, aka actress Jessica Brown Findlay, is set to join the cast of Frankenstein, according to THR.
James McAvoy and Daniel Radcliffe are already set to star, with Paul McGuigan directing from a script by Max Landis. There still aren’t many details on the exact direction that this new take on Mary Shelley’s classic tale will take, although Landis has said he’s planning to put a sci-fi spin on the tale of a creature that is produced by a scientific experiment.
Radcliffe will be the manservant, Igor, with McAvoy and Dr. Frankenstein. Brown will be a ‘trapeze artist who is saved by Igor after an accident, with the two becoming very close in the aftermath’.
It certainly seems the Igor role will be significantly expanded from previous films (he is, after all, a movie creation rather than being in the book. Daniel Radcliffe recently said at the Toronto Film Festival, “It’s about two young, brilliant guys pushing each other. Eventually one loses his morality and the other has to bring him back.”
20th Century Fox is hoping to get the film into production as soon as possible, as there are various other Frankenstein movies in development all over Hollywood and thats not to mention the more modern I Frankenstein, starring Aaron Eckhart, which is out early next year.