Keanu Reeves gets Conflicted for ‘Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde’

Erwin Stoff and Red Wagon Entertainment are co-producing yet another new adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic tale of “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” and may get a stellar director at it’s helm.

Nicolas Winding Refn (Bronson) is in talks with producers to possibly direct this story’s retelling, written by Justin Haythe (Revolutionary Road), of a doctor who concocts a formula that develops an evil version of himself, or alter personality if you will. Haythe should be capable of writing a decent script, so long as it doesn’t end up being Jekyll and Hyde arguing with and yelling at each other for two hours like he did for Leo and Kate.

So, that’s the potentially great news about this project. The slightly less-encouraging news is that Keanu Reeves is attached to star as the doctor with the wild mood swings. An unconventional choice, if you ask me, seeing as Reeves hasn’t shown much emotional range in his past films. Maybe he’ll do a good job, but I can think of countless better choices for this role than Neo.

Coincidentally, Universal is also developing an adaptation of this classic Gothic tale with Guillermo del Toro. Needless to say, this pretty much guarantees the two films, despite the same source material, will be drastically different.

[source: Hollywood Reporter]