What famous authors inspired two dark adventure movies featuring Hugh Jackman in the same year?
Van Helsing (film) Van Helsing is a 2004 American dark fantasy action-adventure film written and directed by Stephen Sommers. It stars Hugh Jackman as vigilante monster hunter Van Helsing, and Kate Beckinsale as Anna Valerious. The film is an homage and tribute to the Universal Horror Monster films from the 1930s and '40s (also produced by Universal Studios which were in turn based on novels by Bram Stoker and Mary Shelley), of which Sommers is a fan.
Breakheart Pass (novel) Breakheart Pass is a novel by Scottish author Alistair MacLean (1922-1987), first published in 1974. It was a departure for MacLean in that, despite the thriller novel plot, the setting is essentially that of a western novel, set in the western ranges of the Sierra Nevada mountains of the Rocky Mountains in the Western United States in the late 19th century. Fans of MacLean will recognize the usual plots twists, thrill-packed finale, and trademark sardonic dialogue. Unfortunately, for American audiences, MacLean was less successful capturing an authentic tone of the frontier American West, and the 1975 movie version starring Charles Bronson, Richard Crenna, Ben Johnson, and Jill Ireland, proved to be more popular with the public than the novel.