Riverdale Star Cast In 1980s Teen Frankenstein Movie
One of the stars of the soon-to-end teen soap Riverdale has a new gig in a 1980s take on Frankenstein from an Oscar winner.
Much like his creation, Frankenstein will never die. Since the publication of Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel, there has essentially been an unceasing stream of adaptations, remakes, reimaginings, and revisionist takes on the simple tale of a man who wishes to defy the wishes of God and create life in his own image, only to be horrified and destroyed by his own hubris. The latest version of this will star Cole Sprouse of the CW’s Riverdale and Kathryn Newton of HBO’s Big Little Lies and is titled Lisa Frankenstein. Also, it takes place in the 1980s, so there is likely to be a lot of neon and legwarmers.
Per Deadline, Lisa Frankenstein is a take on Frankenstein that takes place in 1989, with an unpopular teenager accidentally re-animating the body of a Victorian man. As one does, she then uses a tanning bed in her garage to slowly reconstruct him into her ideal man; we can only assume that she is planning to take him to a prom or winter dance or some other very important social function. Although there are no cast specifics as of yet, we also assume that Riverdale’s own Jughead Jones, Cole Sprouse, will be playing the reanimated corpse and Kathryn Newton will be playing the unpopular teen.
Aside from the Riverdale star and one of the teens from the cult sex comedy Blockers, Lisa Frankenstein will involve two other notables so far: Zelda Williams and Diablo Cody. Williams (an actor and daughter of the late comedian Robin Williams) will be making her debut as a feature film director, after having directed a number of music videos and shorts. Academy Award winner Diablo Cody is writing the film; Cody most recently reunited with Juno director Jason Reitman for the Charlize Theron film Tully. The title Lisa Frankenstein also appears to be a pun on Lisa Frank, the brand of brightly colored Trapper Keepers, stickers, and binders popular in the 1980s. Knowing Diablo Cody, there will probably be a whole lot more culturally-specific puns than that.
Cole Sprouse is currently best known for his role as Jughead Jones on the long-running CW teen soap Riverdale, so he knows something about teenage revisionist takes on things. Prior to featuring on the Archie Comics-derived Riverdale, Sprouse starred in the Disney Channel series The Suite Life of Zack & Cody with his brother Dylan, who does not appear to currently have any gothic romance proto-science fiction quirky films on the horizon. We can only hope for the Dylan Sprouse version of teen Dracula soon.
In addition to starring alongside the Riverdale actor, Kathryn Newton is soon to join the Marvel Cinematic Universe, as all actors inevitably will. She will be appearing in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania as Cassie Lang, the daughter of Paul Rudd’s Ant-Man. Newton is the third actor to play Cassie Lang so far in the MCU, after Abby Ryder Fortson in Ant-Man and Ant-Man and the Wasp, and Emma Fuhrmann in Avengers: Endgame. Hopefully, the Cassie Lang mantle will stick around this time.
