In a recent interview with EW, Pushing Daisies creator Bryan Fuller shed light on his most recent TV project Mockingbird Lane. Here are some choice quotes from the extensive interview that can be read in full right here.
Fuller on the inspiration behind the Munsters reboot: “It started when I was at the Tim Burton exhibit in New York and he had all these monster family portraits. And I thought there should be a show about a family of monsters. But any show about a family of monsters is going to be calling back to the original show about a family of monsters. We are reinventing The Munsters because if we didn’t everybody would just say, “You’re ripping off the Munsters!” So why not just make it official?”
On why he decided to change the name of the show from The Munsters to Mockingbird Lane: “The script is such a dramatic departure from the tone and style of the original show. If we continued to call the show The Munsters, people are just going to to think we’re doing The Munsters. We’re doing a reinvention and re-imagination of this property. I love the Universal monsters. I love The Creature from the Black Lagoon, The Invisible Man, The Wolfman, Phantom of the Opera, The Mummy. There’s so many great characters we can run through this metaphor of family storytelling that it just felt it was ripe to do as a one-hour dramedy. Having all those elements to play with, the toy box is really, really full.” (Note: the title is a direct reference to the Munsters’ address: 1313 Mockingbird Lane.)
On what viewers can expect in the pilot: “There’s some great stories going forward in the series. Any story you can tell onParenthood we can run through a Universal monster prism and tell it in a very twisted, off-kilter way. What I love about the pilot story is it’s about a family who loves each other and they have a child [Eddie, the werewolf] with a disability and they’re trying to craft a path for that child so he can have a happy life — they just happen to be monsters. And, unlike in the original, we’re going to see our monsters do monstrous things.”
Fuller’s grand vision for the show: “We want this show to be an American Harry Potter. To have that sense of a magical world that you get to go to with your family and find stories told in a fantastical way that are instantly relatable. It’s an American Horror Story that the whole family can watch.”
Since the pilot is still being tweaked, no actual footage has been released from Mockingbird Lane…until now, that is. EW got their hands on a still that reveals the Munsters‘ mansion. “We wanted [the mansion] to have feeling of the original,” Fuller comments. “We wanted a house in the neighborhood that children would walk past faster than other houses.” The image looms above.
Mockingbird Lane, starring Eddie Izzard as Grandpa, comes to TV this fall on NBC.
[Via EW]