Hey, remember Haley Joel Osment from A.I.: Artificial Intelligence? Pay It Forward? Okay, fine, The Sixth Sense, in which he saw dead people? Well, that’s what he looks like now! And he’s still acting in things! His latest project is going to be an adaptation of Steve Niles‘ graphic novel Wake the Dead, and he will be playing a college student who experiments with raising the dead like a young Dr. Frankenstein. Hey, good for him! We thought he was destined for a life of crystal meth and hookers. Or just college.
Steve Niles himself recently tweeted that “Haley Joel Osment sees dead people again, but this time in pieces.” And yes, indeed — rather than just seeing dead people, he will be seeing them and trying to make them live again. (And yes, I avoided making a “seeing them and raising joke.”) Osment will play college student Victor Franklin (see what they did there?) who is “experimenting with reversing death.”
In an interview with Niles back in 2008 when the adaptation was first announced, he said that he had been watching modern-day teen movies taking cues directly from Shakespeare. So why not try the same thing with Mary Shelley?
… [E]very time people try to do Frankenstein, they do it as a period piece. And I would like to see a movie someday that is an actual adaptation of the novel, because that has yet to be done, but I was more interested in seeing if we could make an interesting Frankenstein movie such that today’s audiences would be into it — or, as it was originally, a comic book that would appeal to people. And it worked. You know, it doesn’t have all the beats of Frankenstein, but it’s something that is soaked so thoroughly into our consciousness, in everything from Frankenstein to Frankenberry, it’s a character everybody knows.
Niles also mentions that the element that appealed to him the most was that the real source of evil was Dr. Frankenstein himself, not the monster he created. So maybe that means we’re going to see a whole other side of Haley Joel Osment that will continue to help him shed the “I Was a Creepy Kid” thing for good. Of course, the drunken driving arrest probably nipped that in the bud, too. But seriously, we’re pretty psyched to see the kid in what could be a new horror geek staple.
The screenplay for Wake the Dead will be written by James Hart (Bram Stoker’s Dracula) and Jay Russell, who will also direct. Even more fun: Slash, former lead guitarist of Guns ‘n’ Roses, is producing with Michael Williams and Rob Eric through his production company Slasher Films. (In other news: Slash has his own production company! It was first formed last October.) Wake the Dead will start shooting in the fall, after Mr. Osment finishes production on another project called Sassy Pants. Yes — Sassy Pants. Oh, Osment, you’re going to have a fun career.
(Variety via SciFi Mafia)
