The director who hates Kenneth Branagh with a passion: “The worst movie I’ve ever seen”
Most filmmakers avoid bad-mouthing each other. With the notable exception of Spike Lee, who tends to invite criticism with open arms, most directors would rather maintain a collegial relationship with their peers, no matter what they think of them as people or artists. Every so often, however, private resentments reach a boiling point and spill out into the press.
Such was the case in the mid-1990s, when Kenneth Branagh found himself the target of an enraged Oscar-nominated director and screenwriter with whom he had briefly collaborated. Frank Darabont was, and remains, best known for writing and directing the 1994 classic The Shawshank Redemption. Just two months after that film was released, another movie that Darabont helped shape hit theatres. Frankenstein was Branagh’s attempt to make a definitive version of Mary Shelley’s seminal Gothic novel in the way that Francis Ford Coppola had done with Bram Stoker’s Dracula two years before.
Screenwriter Steph Lady had written the original script, and Darabont had been hired to overhaul it. At just 33, Branagh had already been nominated for three Oscars, including for ‘Best Director’ and ‘Best Actor’ for his 1989 adaptation of Shakespeare’s Henry V. Having him as director and star of the film seemed like a surefire combination, and when you threw Robert De Niro into the mix as the young doctor’s monstrous creation, it all seemed quite promising indeed.
When the film was released, however, it was only a modest success at the box office, and critics condemned it for being overly dramatic and not particularly thrilling. As far as Darabont was concerned, it was an abject disaster. Speaking to Creative Screenwriting in 2016, he railed against Branagh’s take on Shelley’s novel and distanced himself from the project.
“I’ve described Frankenstein as the best script I ever wrote and the worst movie I’ve ever seen,” he said, decrying the tonal bombast that the director insisted on bringing to his script. “I don’t know why Branagh needed to make this big, loud film,” he continued. “The material was subtle. Shelley’s book was way out there in a lot of ways, but it’s also very subtle.”
Ultimately, he described the film as his Waterloo, saying, “That’s where I really got my ass kicked most as a screenwriter.”
Steph Lady was even more scathing, denouncing Branagh’s ego and even comparing him to the character he portrayed in the film. “Branagh became sort of the metaphor for the movie itself,” he said. “He banned executives from the set. He got crazy, just like Victor Frankenstein.”
Branagh left Hollywood after the disastrous experience and returned to Shakespeare. But Darabont still hasn’t gotten over the misuse of his script, and it seems that at least one filmmaker felt similarly. In 2011, Guillermo Del Toro said that Darabont’s script was “pretty much perfect,” and that he would “kill” to make a proper adaptation of it. He wasn’t just fantasising. His version is slated to be released later this year, though Darabont is not credited as a screenwriter.
