Academy Award-winner Anthony Hopkins is set to star in the reimagining of H.G. Wells' classic novel The Island of Dr. Moreau, Deadline exclusively reported.

The film, Eyes in the Trees, is from director Timothy Woodward Jr. In the movie, Hopkins plays a geneticist who has been living in isolation after the government stopped giving him money to fund his research. He lost his funding when one of his test subjects became violent.

Later, two filmmakers and their crew go to visit him hoping to share in his discovery. However, they find out that their journey is about to turn into a fight for survival — theirs and the rest of humanity.

The long and hard road to The Island of Dr. Moreau

The Island of Dr. Moreau was published in 1986 and has seen several film adaptations. Wikipedia's current count is at 12. However, there are two movies that are the most prominent: one released in 1977 starring Burt Lancaster and Michael York, and the other in 1996 starring Marlon Brando and Val Kilmer. The latter became known as one of the most infamously difficult productions in Hollywood.

When the novel was published in 1896, Europe was in the middle of a growing discussion about the possible degeneration of the human race. In 1875 and 1898, groups such as the National Anti-Vivisection Society and the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection, respectively, started becoming more vocal against the vivisection of animals. The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines this as “the cutting of or operation on a living animal usually for physiological or pathological investigation.”

The novel was Wells' reflection regarding the ethical, philosophical and scientific concerns as well as controversies regarding experimentation of animals. This was also crossed with Charles Darwin's ideas of evolution — both in humans and animals — that disrupted much of society in the late 19th century.

As for Eyes in the Trees, its script was written by B. Harrison Smith and Mike Manning. Aside from Hopkins, there hasn't been any official announcement regarding the rest of the cast.

Sir Anthony Hopkins was last seen in two movies in 2023: Freud's Last Session and lending his voice to Rebel Moon – A Child of Fire: Part One. He won his first Oscar in 1992 for best actor in The Silence of the Lambs opposite Jodie Foster who also won for best actress. The second he won in 2021 for the same category for The Father opposite Olivia Colman.

This spring, Hopkins stars as Sir Nicholas Winton in the movie One Life, based on the real-life British stockbroker who ended up rescuing more than 600 children from Czechoslovakia before the start of World War II. It was launched at the Toronto International Film Festival last year.