Universal Pictures is going to release a Monster Mash musical movie. They have tapped Matt Stawski to direct the project. The Universal Monster movie is set to be the director’s first feature-length project after a Grammy Award winning career in music videos. He also directed Side Effects for Awesomeness TV. This will certainly be a big leap for the Universal Monsters, especially compared to what else has been put out over the last few years. Regardless, this could be a pretty fun project that may go on to rival Rocky Horror Picture Show at some point down the line.
The Monster Mash movie has brought on Will Widger to write the script, while Temple Hill Entertainment’s Marty Bowen is producing. Widger’s best-known work includes Damned for Legendary and, Magic The Gathering and Lumberjanes, both for Fox. As of this writing, there is no story details for the upcoming movie or casting. With that being said, once the project has been written, it will be time to choose the cast, so we should get some news in the coming months, along with a production start and release date.
“Monster Mash” is a Halloween novelty song by Bobby “Boris” Pickett. The hit single was first released in 1962 where it immediately went on top the Billboard Hot 100 chart just before Halloween. It has since become a holiday classic and has been covered way too many times to count, though punk band The Misfits does a decent version, if anybody is out looking for a fun cover of the 1962 original. The Beach Boys also do a pretty good cover of the song too. It will be a stretch to turn the short novelty song into a feature-length musical, but now might be the right time for it to happen.
A new musical from an original idea may be exactly what the box office needs. The big screen adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cats was released late last year and it might as well have been labeled as a horror movie. While it’s an iconic Broadway Musical, it just did not translate well on to the big screen, where it tanked at the box office. As of this writing, it is believed that the studio is set to lose nearly $100 million on the project, which isn’t a good thing.
John Fischer is producing Monster Mash for Temple Hill and he will be an executive producer with Matt Stawski. Universal’s Senior Vice President of Production Jeyun Munford and Creative Executive Tony Ducret will oversee the project on behalf of the studio. So far, this is the only information about the project that is available, though more news is expected to drop soon. Deadline was the first to announce Universal’s Monster Mash movie. While we wait for more details, you can check out a video of the classic 1962 Halloween song below.
