Personally, I’m not thrilled that they’re venturing beyond fairly tales, myths and Disney movies. Fairy tales in particular have one-dimensional characters, so reinterpreting these, fleshing them out, has a lot of creative potential. But ‘The Count of Monte Cristo’ is a literary classic, with complex and well rounded characters. Reinterpreting these is far more difficult, and likely to come across as awkward AU fanfic unless the context is well chosen and it is skilfully done. I never enjoyed the Whale/Frankenstein backstories and I’m not yet sure about Jekyll and Hyde. All I can hope is that I’ll be pleasantly surprised.
Yeah I tend to agree, though I’ve been a big advocate of them doing other stories than Disney (bringing in other mythologies). Works like Count of Monte Cristo are vast in scope and really well developed. This is a case where it’s probably better to not “twist” the source material but let it stay true to the original. The fact that they are calling him the Count (and not Edmond) suggests that most of his story is actually complete (so why is he in the LUS?)