The Strange Case of Keanu Reeves trying to play Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde!

I literally laughed out loud yesterday when I read The Hollywood Reporter's scoop that Universal were pinning their hopes on Keanu Reeves to bring The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde back to the big screen. What a misguided choice. Jekyll and Hyde, always Universal's toughest classic horror story to remake because of the need of a GREAT actor to play the Jekyll side with a poignancy of decency, a guy who is really a good man but is undermined by his failings in life and the Hyde side, who is the world's biggest bastard but the actor loses the battle if he makes him over the top loony. Sure he needs to an animated fellow, with deep raw emotion but he can't overact it, or our sympathy goes. Which unless they make Hyde completely CGI which has become a nasty modern and uninteresting method of re-telling this character (see the turds that are Van Hesling and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen), then Keanu Reeves doesn't have anyway near the depth required to make this a success. Not even 5% of the depth required to even pass as both characters. Ah man, what's so painful about this choice is that the rest of the project was being setup with great talent. Justin Haythe, the guy who did a fabulous job with adapting Revolutionary Road for the big screen is scribing with Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn (director of the brilliant Bronson and Pusher series) attached to direct. He is going to be a top, top director in the near future and I'm hopeful that these two new and promising talents in the industry who have proven to be so good character with character based stuff, will play a true to Robert Stevenson Victorian set tale, with strictly NO CGI! It's a writer/director combination of real potential but I just come back to Keanu again, he is totally mis-cast here. Universal must have short memories, do they not remember his one note turn as Jonathan Harker in their Dracula adaptation in the 90's or even his last movie The Day The Earth Stood Still remake? He is a charisma killer to any film these days. What about Viggo Mortensen? What about Aaron Eckhart? What about Hugh Jackman (who actually would be damn PERFECT for this) Someone who has real depth and range and I've always thought charisma was the one thing you needed above all to make this work and Keanu just hasn't got it. Universal couldn't wait to get this back off the ground, indeed this is now the second adaptation they have in official development. Guillermo del Toro is attached to make a Jekyll & Hyde movie sometime in the future (but not for at least five years as he is working on The Hobbit) but they see money available to be made now. They haven't scrapped del Toro's version, but have made it known they want to make a movie NOW with this team. Universal are agressively bringing back their stock of Universal monsters with The Wolf Man opening later in the year, with David Goyer working on The Invisible Man and with Frankenstein, Dracula and The Hunchback of Notre Dame surely not far behind. I'm contionusly shocked too that they haven't pulled the trigger on remaking Lon Chaney's famous lost film London After Midnight yet, though I don't think I'm going to look a fool if I predict that sometime in the next decade, an adaptation will be made by someone. Hopefully, they won't be so misguided as casting a Keanu Reeves esque actor for that too.