Sumith Prasad
Doug Ellin’s 2015 comedy film ‘Entourage,’ a sequel to the HBO series of the same name, follows Vincent Chase’s efforts to make his directorial debut with ‘Hyde,’ a modern retelling of Robert Louis Stevenson’s gothic horror novella ‘Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.’ The science fiction epic is made using over $100 million, causing a career-threatening conflict between the financers of the movie and Ari Gold, who greenlit the project for Warner Bros. The film also mentions Johnny “Drama” Chase’s celebrated TV shows, ‘Viking Quest’ and ‘Johnny’s Bananas.’ Their connections with reality can be summarized as intricate!
Hyde Was Created to Satirize the Making of Big-Budget Projects in Hollywood
‘Hyde’ is a fictional film conceived by Doug Ellin to shape the narrative of ‘Entourage.’ The filmmaker created the HBO series as a satire of what happens in Hollywood through the POVs of an A-lister and his entourage. Ellin’s film targets film financers who do not hesitate to meddle in the creative side of a project with their authority as producers. Travis McCredle’s efforts to interfere with Vincent Chase’s process are “literally taken from good friends of mine having to deal with financiers who don’t care about movies and just want to make money,” as per the filmmaker’s interview with The Christian Science Monitor.
Chase’s debut directorial work has to be a big-budget project for the movie’s narrative to work, which justifies Ellin’s decision to conceive ‘Hyde’ as a science fiction epic. As far as the ten most expensive films of all time are concerned, seven belong to the genre of Chase’s movie. The decision to make the project an adaptation of a celebrated literary work is unsurprising. Hollywood’s obsession with literature and comic book sources over original ideas is well known. Since ‘Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde’ is one of the literary works with the most adaptations, Ellin must have relied on the same to make ‘Hyde’ the most unoriginal movie.
Even though we cannot watch the feature-length version of ‘Hyde’ in reality, there are several adaptations of Stevenson’s novella that deserve our attention. The prominent works among these films are John Barrymore’s 1920 silent film ‘Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,’ Fredric March’s Academy Award-winning 1931 adaptation, and the latter’s 1941 remake, starring Spencer Tracy and Ingrid Bergman.
Johnny’s Bananas and Viking Quest Do Not Have Real-Life Counterparts
Similarly, ‘Johnny’s Bananas’ and ‘Viking Quest’ are fictional TV shows conceived by Doug Ellin and his team of writers for the HBO series. The former is an integral part of the eighth and final season of the show, seemingly created to explore the intricacies behind the making of a TV series. The stars of the project, Johnny “Drama” Chase and Andrew Dice Clay, get entangled in several predicaments that are common in show business after lending their voices to the protagonists. Its only connection with reality is a lawsuit filed by John Devenanzio, who is featured in ‘The Real World: Key West’ and MTV’s ‘The Challenge.’
Devenanzio alleged that he was known as Johnny Bananas in the industry and that the show within the HBO series features an “unwarranted, unauthorized, and unfavorable mention of [his] name and personality and allusions to [his] physical and mental character.” A New York judge eventually dismissed the lawsuit. ‘Viking Quest’ might have been conceived to comically present the lead actor, Johnny Chase. The character’s appearance with horns and armor as the protagonist, Tarvold, was iconic. Kevin Dillon, who portrays Johnny, even appeared as Tarvold at the San Diego Comic-Con. Even though it cannot be watched in reality, HBO and Fuel Industries produced a game inspired by the fictional show.
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