Dean Koontz's Frankenstein Series To Be Adapted into Movie Franchise
Posted 02.16.10 by BrentJS
Prolific author Dean Koontz's Frankenstein novel series has already conquered the New York Times bestseller list and spawned a comic book adaptation, but now his "monster" may be making its way to the silver screen. According to Variety, Ralph Winter and Terry Botwick have acquired the rights to Frankenstein through their 1019 Entertainment production company with the goal of turning the property into a movie franchise.
Loosely based on Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Koontz's series sees Victor Frankenstein, now known as Helios, still alive and well and living in New Orleans. Helios, having experimented on himself to prolong his life, now has access to modern technology, which he uses to engineer artificial humans or "bio androids." Shelley's monster is still very much "alive" in Koontz's series, as well. Giving himself the name Deucalion, the monster spends years at a Tibetan monastery until he learns of Helios' whereabouts. Together with two homicide detectives, O'Connor and Maddison, Deucalion quests to end the threat that Helios and his bio androids pose to the human race.
The first book in Koontz's Frankenstein series, Prodigal Son, was published in 2004, with the second book, City of Night, following a year later. There was a long delay for the third chapter in the trilogy, Dead and Alive, but it debuted at #1 on the New York Times paperbacks bestseller list when it hit the stands in July 2009. In October 2009, it was announced that Koontz had signed a deal with Bantam Books for three more Frankenstein novels, giving Winter and Botwik a total of six novels from which to draw inspiration for their planned series of Frankenstein movies.
Winter is no stranger to movie series development, having produced the X-Men and Fantastic Four franchises for Fox. Botwick is the former president of Vanguard Films and Animation, producers of Happily N'Ever After and Space Chimps.