Universal Still Keen on an Invisible Agent

Universal Still Keen on an Invisible Agent

Four years ago we first heard about Universal's efforts to revive their classic monster franchise The Invisible Man in the form of a period spy movie. Then nothing. I'd assumed the project was dead. But today, Dark Horizons reports that Batman screenwriter David Goyer's take on the famed franchise character is still alive. “It’s a period film," Goyer told the LA Times' Hero Complex blog, "but it’s period like Downey’s Sherlock Holmes. It’s period but it’s a reinvention of the character in the sort of way that Stephen Sommers exploded The Mummy into a much bigger kind of mythology.” I like the sound of that. In 2007, Variety reported that Goyer's story was conceived as a sequel to H.G. Wells' original tale, and "[centered] on a British nephew of the original Invisible Man. Once he discovers his uncle's formula for achieving invisibility, he is recruited by British intelligence agency MI5 during WWII."

At the time, the trade article called this concept "a new take" on the Wells classic, but the idea of an invisible spy has actually been done before, even in that same era. Universal's own fourth entry in its original Invisible Man series was called The Invisible Agent (1942) and featured the first Invisible Man's grandson volunteering to use his formula and aid the Allied cause during WWII, as a spy behind German lines. Then in 1958, future Danger Man/Secret Agent creator Ralph Smart cut his teeth on the espionage genre with a television series called H.G. Wells' Invisible Man, in which the character (very unlike Wells' version, despite the titular possessive) worked for British Intelligence in a contemporary Cold War setting. (It's an enjoyable show, featuring a number of familiar spy faces who would go on to appear in Bond movies, The Avengers, Danger Man and other Sixties spy shows.) In the Sixties, Eurospy movies like Matchless and Mr. Superinvisible flirted with the invisible spy scenario. The 1992 Chevy Chase take on the character, Memoirs of an Invisible Man (directed by John Carpenter!), also had an espionage element, with Sam Neil as an unscrupulous CIA agent in pursuit of our transparent hero. More recently, the Sci-Fi Channel ran a show about an Invisible Man who worked for a top secret government agency. None of that, of course, is any reason why there can't be another Invisible Man spy movie, and, personally, I'd welcome a WWII spy movie in the vein of the movies Goyer mentioned!