For the last few years, director Gautier Cazenave has been trying to get a passion project off the ground, a project that merges the worlds of two popular properties he has been a fan of since childhood: SHERLOCK HOLMES VS. FRANKENSTEIN.
The screenplay Cazenave wrote with Stephen Marians has been praised for how accurately it portrays the characters while telling the following story:
1898. Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson travel to Germany to investigate a strange case in the village of Darmstadt.
Who is the mysterious figure who digs up corpses and steals their limbs? Could these events be related to the nearby presence of Castle Frankenstein, whose name is closely associated to Mary Shelley’s horror novel? Everyone is a suspect…
A crew is already attached, along with a cast that includes Dario Costa, Angèle Vivier, Stephanie Campion, Eric Godon, Nicolas Robin, Clement von Franckenstein, Ben Snyder (who played Sherlock Holmes in the 2010 Asylum movie), Shane Briant of FRANKENSTEIN AND THE MONSTER FROM HELL, and as Frankenstein’s Monster, 7’3″ actor John Lebar, who appeared opposite Benedict Cumberbatch on the modern SHERLOCK TV show.
I’m in as soon as I hear the title, and the more respectful the crossover is to the source material, the better. Despite how promising as this all sounds, the project has been through a lot of ups and downs, and at times people have figured that it must be dead. But now, its chances are starting to look pretty good.
For the last month, Cazenave has been running an Indiegogo campaign to raise the funds needed to get SHERLOCK HOLMES VS. FRANKENSTEIN into production. Once a few scenes have been shot, he’ll then show them to potential investors to raise the rest of the necessary budget. Filming on these scenes is definitely going to happen, because the campaign had a goal of €25,000 and that’s a goal it has surpassed. As of this writing, the total stands at €28,690 with 17 hours left.
The fact that Cazenave raised even more than he was aiming for will help convince investors that there is an audience for SHERLOCK HOLMES VS. FRANKENSTEIN. If you’re part of that audience and would like to chip in during the final hours, you can do so right here.
The director has promised that the actual movie will look better than this teaser they shot in 2012: