If someone has to bring the 1960s TV show The Munsters back again, it might as well be a zombie. Rob Zombie, in fact. The rock star turned filmmaker announced on his Instagram today that he’s making a movie based on the cult sitcom about a friendly family of monsters.
“Attention Boils and Ghouls!” the director of House of 1000 Corpses and Halloween wrote. “The rumours are true! My next film project will be the one I’ve been chasing for 20 years! THE MUNSTERS! Stay tuned for exciting details as things progress!” He then threw on a few hashtags including “Universal Studios,” which controls the franchise. Speculation is that the film would be direct for the company’s streaming service, Peacock, but that’s unconfirmed. Gizmodo reached out to Universal for comment and will update this post if we hear back.
Unfortunately that’s all the info there is which forces us to do a little speculating. The Munsters, of course, were Herman, Lily, Grandpa, Marilyn, and Eddie, a seemingly normal family who just happened to share several characteristics with famous monsters. Running only two years, The Munsters was a minor success but was frequently overshadowed at the time by similar genre shows like The Addams Family and Batman. Thanks to syndication, though, in the decades since it’s become a pop culture mainstay and has spawned several films, spinoffs, and more.
That someone would bring back a name brand franchise isn’t the interesting part of this news though. It’s the fact that it’s Rob Zombie doing it. Zombie’s films are usually gory, intense, and brutal. Sure, there are usually comedic elements, but not Munsters-type humour — more of a sick, twisted humour you either love or hate. How his aesthetic and tone fits with the loving, goofy Munsters fans have come to be so fond of, we don’t know. Maybe it doesn’t. Only time will tell how Zombie handles this famous monster mash-up.