The screenwriters behind Tim Burton’s much-loved drama Ed Wood are working on a biopic about Bela Lugosi for Universal. Veteran screenwriting duo Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, who have form when it comes to biopics, are currently working on a movie about the early life of Bela Lugosi. Best known for his suavely menacing embodiment ... Ed Wood’s screenwriters are working on a biopic about Bela Lugosi
The screenwriters behind Tim Burton’s much-loved drama Ed Wood are working on a biopic about Bela Lugosi for Universal.
Veteran screenwriting duo Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, who have form when it comes to biopics, are currently working on a movie about the early life of Bela Lugosi.
Best known for his suavely menacing embodiment of Dracula, both on stage and in Tod Browning’s 1931 horror classic, the Hungarian actor became a regular face in Universal’s other genre films of the time, including The Black Cat, Son Of Frankenstein and Black Friday. Declining health meant that his acting roles declined in his later years, though he did become a close collaborator with the infamous filmmaker Ed Wood in the 1950s.
That filmmaker was famously immortalised in Tim Burton’s wonderful drama Ed Wood in 1994, which Alexander and Karaszewski also wrote. Johnny Depp played the twinkle-eyed, indefatigable Wood, while Martin Landau won an Oscar for his turn as the cantankerous, latter-years Lugosi. It didn’t make money at the time, but Ed Wood was rightly acclaimed; to this day, it remains one of Burton’s most thoughtful and sweetly funny movies.
Alexander and Karaszewski’s latest film is said to focus on Bela Lugosi’s younger years, perhaps revealing how he became a star of stage and screen in 1910s Hungary before moving to New York in the 1920s to play Dracula on Broadway. That fateful career move led him to Hollywood, and global stardom by the beginning of the 1930s.
The project is being overseen by Leonardo DiCaprio’s Appian Way Productions, with Universal Pictures distributing, according to Deadline.
Alexander and Karaszewski’s earlier movies include The People Vs Larry Flynt, Man On The Moon, and Dolemite Is My Name – the latter featuring a career-best performance from Eddie Murphy, playing street poet, comedian and star Rudy Ray Moore. They also wrote Problem Child and its sequel, but hey – everyone’s got to start somewhere.
It’s early days for their Bela Lugosi movie, and a director hasn’t been named yet. Who knows – maybe Tim Burton might be tempted. His last collaboration with the screenwriting duo was Big Eyes – a biopic about another outsider artist, Margaret Ulbrich.
We’ll bring you more on this as we get it.
