Most people figure it'll be zombies to finally come along and conquer the dread vampire craze, but my money's always been on Frankenstein. Sure, he's just one character-- and a mis-named one at that, given that he's really Frankenstein's unnamed monster--but the character has endured for a reason, and is highly unlikely to get the "sexy" treatment that has made vampires so irritating lately. So count me in for the latest Frankenstein comeback at Sony, where Deadline reports that Craig Fernandez has pitched a contemporary take on the story and will write the script for producer Matt Tolmach.
Fernandez has a number of projects in development around Hollywood, including a script at DreamWorks Animation and the Lionsgate film From Prada to Nada, a Latino take on Sense and Sensibility. There's no more information in the Deadline piece about exactly how he'll update Mary Shelley's Frankenstein novel for a modern audience, but given that we've got a major lack of mad scientists in real life, there will probably be less shouting of "It's alive!" from the lab than we've seen in the past.
There's a fair bit of competition out there in the Frankenstein adaptation game-- Timur Bekmambetov is apparently working on an adaptation of a novel loosely concerning a doctor named Victor Frankenstein, the Dean Koontz series of Frankenstein novels are headed for adaptation, as is Kevin Grevioux's graphic novel I, Frankenstein, and even Enchanted director Kevin Lima is planning a teen take on the story. Given how different all the takes are it's not exactly a race, but Fernandez's Sony project still has time to earn the honor of being the only one of these to actually start production.
