Dean Koontz's FRANKENSTEIN Book Series to be Adapted for Film

We've got a 21st century Frankenstein story that's going to be adapted into a feature film. Ralph Winter and Terry Botwick have acquiring feature rights to Dean Koontz's Frankenstein series through their 1019 Entertainment company. There are three novels of ultimately two trilogies that have been published, Prodigal Son, City of Night, and Dead and Alive.

The story places the doctor who's a socially prominent and successful businessman, and his super-human original creation Deucalion, in modern-day New Orleans. It centers on a pair of street-smart detectives who encounter Deucalion while investigating a murder, leading them to a bizarre array of "engineered" humans.

Winter and Botwick are hoping to launch a successful franchise from the story. They say, "These books have enough twists and turns to keep the public coming back to the theaters for many years to come." It depends on how well the movies are made before they know it will succeed or not. Several producers are looking for the next big franchise, but if the film ends up being bad don't expect to finish it off. 

I haven't read any of these books, but here is the description from the first one:

From the celebrated imagination of Dean Koontz comes a powerful reworking of one of the classic stories of all time. If you think you know the legend, you know only half the truth. Here is the mystery, the myth, the terror, and the magic of . . .

Every city has its secrets. But none as terrible as this. He is Deucalion, a tattooed man of mysterious origin, a sleight-of-reality artist who has traveled the centuries with a secret worse than death. He arrives in New Orleans as a serial killer stalks the streets, a killer who carefully selects his victims for the humanity that is missing in himself. Deucalion’s path will lead him to cool, tough police detective Carson O’Connor and her devoted partner, Michael Maddison, who are tracking the slayer but will soon discover signs of something far more terrifying: an entire race of killers who are much more–and less–than human and, deadliest of all, their deranged, near-immortal maker: Victor Helios–once known as Frankenstein.

The story has promise so it should be interesting to see how they develop it. Winter and Botwick were producers on films such as the X-Men Trilogy, Tim Burton's Planet of the Apes, and The Fantastic four. I guess that will give you a good idea of what type of movie to expect from these guys. 

The fourth book in the series, titled Lost Souls will be released in June of this year. The story was also converted into the form of a comic book.

What are your thoughts on this new modern day Frankenstein tale?