Warner Bros. Conjures Mandrake

 

Warner Bros. has acquired the film rights to Mandrake the Magician, the classic comic strip created by Lee Falk, Heat Vision reports.

Debuting in 1934, Mandrake followed a tuxedo-wearing illusionist who used his hypnosis abilities to fight foes like the Cobra, his former colleague Aleena the Enchantress, and his own evil twin brother Derek. Accompanied by Lothar, an African prince who served as the magician’s valet and bodyguard, and Princess Narda of Cockaigne, Mandrake has faced everyone from gangsters to werewolves to aliens over the years.

Mandrake made the leap early to movies, debuting in a 1939 serial from Columbia Pictures, and then appearing four decades later in a made-for-TV project. The latest attempt to bring the character to the big screen occurred in 2007, when Jonathan Rhys Meyers and then Hayden Christensen were cast in a planned film directed first by Chuck Russell and later Mimi Leder.

Atlas Entertainment has been involved with the adaptation since 2009, but Heat Vision contends Warner Bros. is looking for new writers to give Mandrake a makeover in the vein of the studio’s Sherlock Holmes franchise.