Mandrake the Magician Taps
Puss in Boots Screenwriter

 

Warner Bros. and Atlas Entertainment have hired Puss in Boots scribe Tom Wheeler to rewrite Mandrake the Magician, their big-screen reinvention of the classic comic strip, Variety reports. Twelves Monkeys screenwriters David and Janet Peoples penned the first draft.

Created in 1934 by Lee Falk, 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. 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 previous 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.

Warner Bros. is expected to give Mandrake a modern makeover in the vein of its Sherlock Holmes franchise.