Meyers the Magician?

by Matt Holmes

The amazing search engine that is Google, tells me that British actor Jonathan Rhys Meyers was cast as MANDRAKE THE MAGICIAN in the movie adaptation of the B-list comic character that is currently in development with Chuck Russell set to direct. Russell last directed THE SCORPION KING in 2002 but enjoyed his best success in the 90's with his adaptation of the dark comic book character THE MASK.

This news apparently was first reported on the web in late-April 2oo7, so today's news should be focused on the fact that UFC fighter Randy Couture has been added to the cast. But I need to talk about MANDRAKE on a whole because this is completely new information to me, I can't believe I missed it the first time around. MANDRAKE THE MAGICIAN was a comic strip first written in the U.S. in 1934 by Lee Falk, a writer who is probably better known for creating the character THE PHANTOM, who himself got his own film in 1996. Mandrake was an illusionist who could hypnotise characters in impossibly quick time and would fight crime. He would fight gangsters, mad scientists and aliens from outer space. The character has already been translated into a 15 minute serial in 1940 around the same time as a movie serial starring Warren Hull as Mandrake. Since that 12 part movie serial, the character has been the subject of various failed projects and cameo appearances in other works of visual media... alongside his comic series. Even esteemed Italian director Frederico Fellini toyed with directing an adaptation of the character many years back. Here's the news of Couture involvement from TheBadandUgly.com...
The station (QFM 96.3) had Randy Couture from UFC on and were talking to him about general UFC items when he said he was traveling to China in the next few weeks to start filming the movie Mandrake. He said he had quite a few scenes in the movie and that it was being billed as a cross between James Bond and Harry Houdini. He was pretty pumped about it.
I love magician movies but Meyers is a bit of a bore as an actor for me. I enjoyed his work on MATCH POINT but leading a movie like this as a magician... not sure if that would interest me so much. THE ILLUSIONIST wasn't bad, THE PRESTIGE was fantastic and I love this genre so I'm behind this movie. Meyers sounds like a mis-casting but I will give him a go, and Russell's shown with THE MASK he can translate a completely unknown comic book character into a decent movie... so fingers crossed. source - coming soon
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Matt Holmes is the co-founder of What Culture, formerly known as Obsessed With Film. He has been blogging about pop culture and entertainment since 2006 and has written over 10,000 articles.