Variety is reporting that Holding Pictures has acquired the rights to Steve Niles’ graphic novel Wake the Dead and has hired Jay Russell (The Water Horse, Ladder 49, Tuck Everlasting) to direct from a screenplay by James V. Hart (August Rush, Hook, Bram Stoker’s Dracula).  Published by IDW, Wake the Dead, a modern re-imagining of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, was originally optioned by Dimension in 2003 (see “Dimension Wakes the Dead”), but their option recently lapsed.  According to Variety Holding Pictures producer Charlie Lyons will fully finance and fund the film through the end of principal photography, which means that the film has a lot better chance of getting made through Holding Pictures than it did at Dimension.

Peter Jackson’s New Zealand-based WETA, which provided the visual effects for Russell’s The Water Horse, will do the same for Wake the Dead.