Per Deadline, Leonardo DiCaprio is developing a biopic about Bela Lugosi for Universal Pictures through his Appian Way Productions banner. The iconic actor is best known for playing Dracula in the classic 1931 horror film.
The report states that it’s still early days on the project, but it was first pitched to the studio two years ago. The script comes from Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, who already have a familiarity with Lugosi thanks to writing Tim Burton’s Ed Wood. That film featured Martin Landau as Lugosi in the final years of his life (Landau won an Oscar for the role), but this new project will focus on a much younger Lugosi.
The new project will follow Lugosi as he immigrates from Hungary to the United States and capture his “meteoric rise to become one of cinema’s most enduring and recognizable figures… both as the star of Dracula on Broadway and the Hollywood adaptation, as well as his precipitous fall after declining the role of Frankenstein, which went to his future rival Boris Karloff.“
The success of Dracula was both a blessing and a curse for Bela Lugosi. It made him a star, sure, but it also locked him into a lifetime of horror-typecasting. In the wake of Dracula’s smash hit, Universal offered him the leading role in Frankenstein — just not the one he wanted. Lugosi had hoped to play Dr. Henry Frankenstein, but producer Carl Laemmle Jr. had other plans and wanted him as the Monster. Lugosi wasn’t having it, and the part eventually went to Boris Karloff, who turned the role into a career-defining moment and secured the enduring success that Lugosi himself had long sought.
Lugosi got his shot at Frankenstein glory a few years later with Son of Frankenstein, the last film to feature Karloff as the Monster. As Ygor, a deranged, broken-necked blacksmith hell-bent on using the creature for his own twisted purposes, Lugosi flat-out stole the movie. He came back for The Ghost of Frankenstein and finally stepped into the Monster’s massive boots himself in Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, closing the loop on one of horror’s most legendary what-ifs. He would return to the role of Dracula for the second and final time on screen in Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein.
It sounds like we’re still a ways off from the Bela Lugosi biopic, but who do you see playing the actor?
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