Haley Joel Osment Is Back As A Dr. Frankenstein Scientist In Wake The Dead

There are so many movies in development based on the classic Frankenstein story that it's virtually impossible to keep track of them, especially since half of them only have working titles and none of them have actually started shooting. But now instead of "that one that's set in modern day" or "that one with Mary Shelley as a character," you can remember "that one with Haley Joel Osment"-- that one's going to stick out in your brain, don't you think?

According to Variety , Osment has been cast in Wake the Dead , which will be a modern-day take on the Frankenstein story, casting Osment as a college student who wants to reverse the inexorable process of death. This one will be based on the graphic novel of the same name by Steven Niles, and is produced by Guns n Roses guitarist Slash, of all people, along with his Slasher FIlms partners Michael Williams and Rob Eric. Jay Russell, whose recent films have included the kid-friendly The Water Horse and My Dog Skip but also has the action film Ladder 49 under his belt, is set to direct.

The Variety piece says that Osment has been attending college and on hiatus from acting in the last few years, and you can't really blame him for pursuing his other options-- he went from scoring an Oscar nomination for The Sixth Sense and working with Steven Spielberg in A.I. to, well, growing up, a pretty uncomfortable situation for one of the world's most famous child actors. In 2007 he was in something called Home of the Giants , but otherwise hasn't been seen on screen since 2003's Secondhand Lions , a pretty incredible gap even by awkward adolescent standards. It's actually great to hear that Osment will be returning to the screen in something dark and different from his child roles, but possibly not so dark as to be alarming (I definitely don't need to see the guy playing a serial killer). If his casting indicates that the film is close to going into production, Wake the Dead could be the first of the many circulating Frankenstein projects to actually get off the ground.

Matt Reeves on His Frankenstein Story, 'This Dark Endeavor' - FEARnet

, But a young Victor Frankenstein, kind of a creation myth. It's a book that's coming out this summer by Kenneth Oppel, and it's a terrific book. Jacob Estes is writing that. And I myself am doing a script that I'm writing that I hope to direct as well, for Universal, which is based on a short story by Ray Nelson called "Eight O'Clock in the Morning", which was actually the source material for John Carpenter's They Live Victor Frankenstein, and it's basically about what formed him psychologically to put him on that path, to become God, to sort of create life. It's actually a very, very sad, painful story, but a wonderful adventure and love story too. And Kenneth Oppel's novel just sort of had a really, really fresh, interesting take on it. Which is in many ways, like Let Me In , a coming of age story, but one that sort of ends up being the creation myth for one of the great stories of our time.

Are there fantasy or horror elements to it?

Yeah, absolutely. It doesn't actually get as far as the Monster, but the movie sort of hints at how these things came about. I think it's gonna be a lot of fun. I'm very excited.    

Thank you very much.

My pleasure.