The ‘Very Young Frankenstein’ series is going to pilot.
Zach Galifianakis, Cary Elwes, Kumail Nanjiani and more are in the cast.
It’ll be a prequel to Mel Brooks’ ‘Young Frankenstein’.
We learned back in July that, following the ‘Spaceballs’ sequel movie news, another Mel Brooks movie was getting the follow-up treatment. Or in this case, a TV prequel. ‘Young Frankenstein’ is the Brooks project in question and the new show is ‘Very Young Frankenstein.’
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While we already knew that Taika Waititi is involved (to direct the pilot) alongside two writers from the ‘What We Do in the Shadows’ TV spin-off, Stefani Robinson and Garrett Basch, the cast has also been revealed.
(L to R) Teri Garr, Gene Wilder, Madeline Kahn, and Marty Feldman in ‘Young Frankenstein’. Photo: 20th Century-Fox.
Brooks’ 1974 horror-comedy starred Gene Wilder (who co-wrote the screenplay with the director) as Frederick Frankenstein, grandson of mad scientist Victor Frankenstein –– the younger Frankenstein pronounces the family name as “Fronkensteen,” to distinguish himself from his ancestor, whose unorthodox experiments have brought the American scientist shame.
When Frederick inherits his grandfather’s Transylvania castle, he wants to prove Victor was not insane. Alongside Igor (pronounced as “Eye-gore”), whose grandfather assisted Victor in the lab, the pair attempts to save the muddied Frankenstein name by creating their own monster. What could go wrong?
Gene Wilder in ‘Young Frankenstein’. Photo: 20th Century-Fox.
There are no details as to how the new show will spin off from the movie, but the title suggests turning the clock back to the earlier days of Frederick. Perhaps a college comedy?
None of the freshly–announced cast have character descriptions, so we’ll have to wait for further details –– but Elwes is listed as the star of this one.
When will ‘Very Young Frankenstein’ be on our screens?
The show right now is just a pilot for FX and Hulu, so it’ll need to score a pickup if it’s to go to series. Audiences (and Brooks’ accountant) are no doubt crossing their fingers.
(L to R) Marty Feldman, Cloris Leachman, Gene Wilder, and Teri Garr in ‘Young Frankenstein’. Photo: 20th Century-Fox.
Bringing the new show to life is a team that knows a little something about creating a successful small screen spin-off from a comedy film –– ‘What We Do in the Shadows’ co-writer/director/actor Taika Waititi is involved alongside Stefani Robinson and Garrett Basch, who served as writer/producers on the show that followed the 2015 movie.
(L to R) Teri Garr, Gene Wilder, Madeline Kahn, and Marty Feldman in ‘Young Frankenstein’. Photo: 20th Century-Fox.
Brooks’ 1974 horror-comedy starred Gene Wilder (who co-wrote the screenplay with the director) as Frederick Frankenstein, grandson of mad scientist Victor Frankenstein –– the younger Frankenstein pronounces the family name as “Fronkensteen,” to distinguish himself from his ancestor, whose unorthodox experiments have brought the American scientist shame.
When Frederick inherits his grandfather’s Transylvania castle, he wants to prove Victor was not insane. Alongside Igor (pronounced as “Eye-gore”), whose grandfather assisted Victor in the lab, the pair attempts to save the muddied Frankenstein name by creating their own monster. What could go wrong?
Gene Wilder in ‘Young Frankenstein’. Photo: 20th Century-Fox.
There are no details as to how the new show will spin off from the movie, but the title suggests turning the clock back to the earlier days of Frederick. Perhaps a college comedy?
Waititi, of course, worked with movie co-creator Jemaine Clement bring ‘What We Do in the Shadows,’ the story of vampire roommates in New Zealand to the US with the FX spin-off that ran between 2019 and 2024, scoring acclaim and plenty of award nominations.
‘Shadows’ veteran Robinson will be showrunner and head writer on the ‘Frankenstein’ show with Basch as an executive producer. And right now, it only has a pilot order, so we’ll see if this one makes it to series.
(L to R) Marty Feldman, Cloris Leachman, Gene Wilder, and Teri Garr in ‘Young Frankenstein’. Photo: 20th Century-Fox.
Teri Garr in ‘One from the Heart’. Photo: Columbia Pictures.
Garr was born in Ohio in 1944. Both her parents worked in show business: Her father was a vaudeville performer, while her mother was a Rockette who eventually worked in costume production (which would end up being helpful later in her daughter’s career.)
The family, which also included her two older brothers, moved to New Jersey before settling in Los Angeles. Garr’s father died when she was 11.
“She put two kids through school. I have one brother who is a surgeon, there’s me, and my other brother builds boats. She was in wardrobe. She was a costumer at the studio. She would always say, ‘We’re still alive…’ ”
Before she ever considered acting, Garr started training as a dancer, with an emphasis on ballet., and it would play a part in her performing career too.
Still, she dropped out of college to move to New York to focus on acting, where she studied at the Actors Studio and the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute.
(L to R) Michael Keaton and Teri Garr in ‘Mr. Mom’. Photo: 20th Century Fox.
Her earliest projects allowed her to use her dancing skills. She appeared in six movies starring Elvis Presley, including 1964’s ‘Viva Las Vegas.’ She also appeared on TV variety shows as a dancer.
But she tired of simply being part of chorus and began to pursue more acting work. After meeting Jack Nicholson in an acting class, she scored her first speaking role in The Monkees’ 1968 movie ‘Head,’ which he wrote.
Her film career began to take off, and she won roles in the likes of ‘The Conversation’ in 1974 and, most memorably, in Mel Brooks’ ‘Young Frankenstein’ as Inga, Dr. Frankenstein’s assistant.
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Garr’s mother was the wardrobe woman on the movie, but that didn’t automatically open the door for her –– the actor still had to audition, and after four rounds, she got the part.
Teri Garr in ‘One from the Heart’. Photo: Columbia Pictures.
In the 1990s, Garr was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, and it impacted her career going forward, though she continued to work.
This is how she described her condition in her memoir, “Speedbumps: Flooring It Through Hollywood” in 2006:
“My body had a trick or two up its sleeve. A stumble here, a tingling finger there. I was trained as a dancer and knew better than to indulge the random aches and pains that visited now and then. Being a successful Hollywood actress may be challenging, but little did I know that the very body that had always been my calling card would betray me.”
Garr married John O’Neil in 1993. Together they adopted daughter Molly, and the couple split in 1996.
She’s survived by Molly and her granddaughter, Tyryn.
(L to R) Marty Feldman, Cloris Leachman, Gene Wilder and Teri Garr in ‘Young Frankenstein’. Photo: 20th Century-Fox.
Mel Brooks has been a fixture in the world of entertainment for longer than most people reading this article have been alive. His entertainment career started in earnest in 1949 when his friend Sid Caesar hired him to write jokes, but even as a teenager, he would perform routines at a pool near his Brooklyn home, and enjoyed his first opportunity to become a comedian at 16 when an emcee at a local club fell ill. His first project as a director wasn’t released until 1967, when he was 41, and he hasn’t slowed down since then, moving back and forth between television, film and the stage, earning not just one but all four of the most coveted prizes in Hollywood — an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony. That’s right, he’s an EGOT.
To commemorate the comedian, filmmaker and storyteller’s 93rd birthday on June 28, we’ve decided to rank all of Mel Brooks’ movies as a director. Some of the superlatives are easy to pick, but there are some surprises in his filmography that have more humor and charm than many audiences may remember.
As the last film he directed, Brooks was chasing after his own imitators, including the Zucker brothers and other blockbuster parodists, which may account for why the film just feels like an endless barrage of bad, bad jokes. Worse, it much more openly pauses to acknowledge anachronisms and other punch lines — something his earlier films only did sparingly, if at all. Exactly how Leslie Nielsen could become a parody of himself remains a mystery given how many comedies he’s been in, but relinquishing the deadpan commitment to a role that he brought to the first “The Naked Gun,” he reduced what was a timely but potentially funny concept to shameless, laugh-free mugging, in a film that felt like Brooks poorly Xeroxing his own “Young Frankenstein.”
Mel Brooks has always sided with the proletariat — even when he sometimes made fun of them. But in playing callous industrialist Goddard Bolt in order to thoroughly lampoon upper class insensitivity, this rare excursion into comparatively straightforward moviemaking (it’s not a parody and he never breaks the fourth wall) fails to make an impact either as social commentary or just a straightforward comedy. Remarkably, it’s not his worst film, but it’s probably just his least.
Brooks’ instincts were beginning to get rusty by the time he decided to lampoon “Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves” (Brooks’ movie has a title even structured like that 1991 blockbuster). Although this film has a few solid laughs (and is notable for giving Dave Chappelle his first major role) it marked a downward trajectory into more zeitgeist-y humor that doesn’t hold up as well today, much less five minutes after the movie ends.
Critics in the late 1970s already found many of Alfred Hitchcock’s films bordering on self-parody before Brooks took aim at them, which may account for why this send-up was less well received than many of his others. Nevertheless a fun proof of many of the scenes and sequences that helped make Hitchcock the “Master of Suspense,” it continues to work best as a showcase for Brooks’ gifts as a stylistic copycat and satirist.
Brooks proved to critics that he was a legitimate filmmaker with this, perhaps one of the most famous adaptations of the Russian novel of the same name. Its longevity hasn’t endured as vividly as some of Brooks’ other films, but it remains a skillful and funny (if uneven) comedy bolstered by solid performances from Dom DeLuise and Frank Langella.
Brooks’ writing and directing debut earned him a Best Original Screenplay Oscar for this wild and unforgettable comedy about a fraudulent producer (Zero Mostel) who enlists a neurotic accountant (Gene Wilder) to help him mount a play that’s destined to fail in order to cover up some sketchy finances. The breakout film went on to become an even better-known musical, but only Brooks could make a truly great film about a truly awful play and have it live on for decades as one of the most impressive “first films” in Hollywood history.
Featuring only one audible line of dialogue (notably, from renowned mime Marcel Marceau) Brooks’ take on films from the silent era once again leaned on his intimate knowledge of filmmaking and storytelling conventions from that era. Though the film was incredibly prescient in its send-up of a studio system that touts star wattage and box office clout over characters and stories, “Silent Movie” remains one of the director’s successes that feels like lives on via word of mouth, so to speak, rather than being shouted from the rooftops as a masterpiece.
For a generation of moviegoers who grew up with “Star Wars” as part of their childhoods, Brooks’ parody is as iconic as George Lucas’ franchise. This is thanks largely to a vivid and instantly memorable cast of characters, the film’s slapstick-y reinterpretation not only of its mythology (“The Schwartz”) but the conventions of big-budget moviemaking (apprehending the lead actors’ stunt doubles), and the filmmaker’s indefatigable parade of jokes that just hammer viewers into side-achy submission.
Brooks kicked off the 1980s with a much-needed goof on not just a genre or the industry as a whole, but on humankind’s legacy itself, creating an anthology that pokes fun at a number of very dark times in history. Simultaneously a parody of several different genres (including sword and sandal epics and period costume dramas), Brooks got ahead of the times for a story whose lessons about humility and vigilance fell on deaf ears in a decade that was obsessed with forging ahead at all costs.
I’m not sure what’s more impressive — that Brooks made another film the same year as “Blazing Saddles,” or that it’s almost as good. Brooks turns his astute, merciless eye towards classic horror for this portrait of Dr. Frankenstein’s grandson as he attempts to escape the shadow of his mad grandfather, only to succumb to the same obsessions — albeit to decidedly more hilarious effect. Gene Wilder conceived the film and Brooks co-wrote it with him, finding the seemingly endless possibilities in the story of a well-intentioned scientist who wants nothing to do with the wackos who made his last name a punch line.
A start-to-finish masterpiece that breaks down more than just the Western genre, Brooks’ first parody set a template for an entire comedic sub-genre while also dismantling some deeply uncomfortable truths about the fabric of America itself. Telling the story of an Old West town and the black sheriff (Cleavon Little) that its people reluctantly install to maintain order, Brooks turns conventions upside down and inside out with this anachronistic, endlessly clever, and flat-out hilarious classic.
