Frankenstein heads to TV: TNT develops series based on Dean Koontz books

Last Updated on July 23, 2021

There are so many FRANKENSTEIN projects in the works right now, I literally don’t have time to link to all of them. Just enter the word into the search box and you’ll see what I mean. Well, today you can add another to the pile, my friends, as TNT has just put into development a series based on Dean Koontz’s five FRANKENSTEIN novels.

James V. Hart, who wrote the screenplay for BRAM STOKER’S DRACULA and co-wrote MARY SHELLEY’S FRANKENSTEIN, will pen the project with his son, Jake. Lionsgate Television and 1019 Entertainment are producing.

This actually isn’t the first time a crack has been taken at Koontz’s modern-day version of Mary Shelley’s classic tale. In 2004, the USA Network aired FRANKENSTEIN, a TV movie directed by Marcus Nispel and starring Parker Posey, Adam Goldberg and Michael Madsen. You’ll be forgiven if you don’t remember it.

Here’s a detailed synopsis of Koontz’s book series:

Every city has secrets. But none as terrible as this. His name is Deucalion, a tattooed man and sleight-of-reality artist who’s traveled for two centuries with a secret worse than death. He arrives in modern-day New Orleans as a serial killer stalks the streets, a killer who carefully selects his victims for the humanity that is missing in himself.

Is this an age-old conspiracy? A near-immortal race of beings, and killers that are more – and less – than human? They are stronger, heal better, and think faster than any humans ever created – and they must be destroyed. But not even Victor Helios – once Dr. Frankenstein – can stop the engineered killers he’s set loose.

On the case is Detective Carson O’Connor, who is cool, cynical, and every bit as tough as she looks. Her partner Michael Maddison would back her up all the way to hell itself – and that just may be where this case ends up.

Now, the only hope rests in Deucalion, a one-time “monster” and Frankenstein’s first attempt to build a perfect human, and his partners, the all-too-human detectives O’Connor and Maddison. Together, they must destroy a monstrosity that even Dr. Frankenstein could not imagine. Deucalion’s journey is fated to end in the ultimate confrontation between a damned creature his mad creator.

Parker Posey