Enchanted director Kevin Lima is on board to direct a new version of Mary Shelley's classic horror novel Frankenstein. Frank has a helluva twist, though; the scientist cooking up cadavers is an "antisocial" young woman in med school who decides to "create" her own friends. And... it's a romantic comedy. Can you say undead boyfriend?!

According to Variety, the writer and one of the executive producers of this potentially awesome project is Karey Kirkpatrick, the writer of The Spiderwick Chronicles, Charlotte's Web, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and James and the Giant Peach, among others. He also directed the Eddie Murphy vehicle Imagine That,

Both Lima and Kirkpatrick have a bunch of projects that are in development, although Lima's have more of a family-friendly vibe (The Spook's Apprentice, Candy Land, The Incredible Mr. Limpet, and Thumb). Kirkpatrick's optioned projects include writing, directing, and producing Captain Abdul's Pirate School, about a girl who is sent to pirate school and plans a mutiny against their evil school principal slash lead pirate, as well as the more adult-minded The Best a Man Can Get, which he is also writing, producing and directing.

Based on distributor Fox 2000's track record, Frank could be focused more on the rom-com than the potential for blood and a cool chick lead, but maybe indie production company Radar Pictures (the peeps behind Richard Kelley's The Box, and remakes of The Amityville Horror and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, among a number of other projects) will make sure that we get a dash of gore with our giggles and girly goodness.

I'm voting for Kat Dennings as our protagonist -- she's smart, snarky, and sweet, and she plays the perfect "outsider." Who would you cast?

(Thanks to Zach for noting that Kirkpatrick is a man. Oops.)

The fancy folks behind Guillermo Del Toro and Chuck Hogan's vampire trilogy have created an awesomely creepy trailer to tease us for The Strain: Book One of The Strain Trilogy's release June 2nd. I try to avoid buying hardcover books, but this will be an exception!

Del Toro tells Wired, ""I'm not good at forensic novels. I'm not good at hazmat language and that CSI-style precision. When [Bram] Stoker wrote Dracula, it was very modern, a CSI sort of novel. I wanted to give The Strain a procedural feel, where everything seems real." A little bit of potty mouth and violence makes this video a dicey proposition for viewing at work, but your mileage may vary. Video after the jump.

Fingers crossed, you may soon see Lost's Charlie telling Hellboy all about how he dug up corpses for The Tall Man -- IFC Films has acquired the rights to distribute Glen McQuaid's horror-comedy I Sell the Dead, which has been making the film-fest rounds since 2008.

The cast is designed to appeal to a certain stripe of film geek: Dominic Monaghan plays an 18th-century graverobber who's giving his confession to a priest (Ron Perlman) before he's led to the gallows for his crimes. In flashback, he tells the story of his life as an apprentice to a professional corpse-nabber (Larry Fessenden, who also produced) as they acquire cadavers for a crazy doctor (Phatasm's Angus Scrimm).

The flick was repped by Submarine's Josh Braun, who also negotiated the sale of Canadian, U.K., Australia, and New Zealand distribution rights to Anchor Bay.

I Sell the Dead opened this year's Slamdance festival, and reactions were mixed. But most reviewers admired first-time director McQuaid's darkly comic sensibility, and his tone that falls somewhere between the old 70's Hammer films and EC's "Tales from the Crypt" comics.

And let's face it -- Perlman and Monaghan together is a genius bit of casting. If the trailer's any indication, we can expect a few zombies, some professional competition from rival grave-robbers, and a lot of seriously dark humor. Check out the trailer:

When it was revealed that Tim Burton and Dorian Gray ( I mean Johnny Depp) would be taking us all down Lewis Carroll's rabbit hole in 2010's 3D IMAX adaptation of Alice in Wonderland, a million bat-filled brains exploded with joy. Burton, who could perhaps be held personally responsible for the popularity of black-and-white striped stockings, has stocked his fantasia with a panoply of freaky faves, from Crispin Glover ("I can kick high!") and baby mama Helena Bonham Carter to Hammer Horror super-spook Christopher Lee. Anticipation is already running high just from the names attached and the few photos floating around the Internet. Empire Magazine has an interview with Burton in its issue coming out Thursday in the UK, along with a few photos from the movie.

But what about the other flicks that are getting our fishnets in a tangle? Naturally, Burton has a slew of projects coming up, including a big-screen adaptation of Dark Shadows with Depp rumored to be Barnabas Collins, and a full-length version of Frankenweenie, but there are a few other films coming out or in production (or in perpetual production) that make it a good time to get your goth on.

It's no secret that I do film reviews, some silly "Splat Chat" interviews, and a few random set reports for the FEARnet website, but I figure those facts are worth repeating before I go on. So there. Duly repeated. Ahem.

Dear Time-Warner Cable / Brighthouse,

You've greatly disappointed a whole lot of horror fans by unceremoniously dropping FEARnet On Demand from your line-up. We humbly request that you reconsider this decision at your earliest convenience.

For the detailed story on what's happening between FEARnet and Time-Warner, I refer you to this earnest plea at the FEARnet website. And then I'll refer you to websites like AICN, CHUD, Slashfilm, Bloody-Disgusting, Cnefantastique, Dread Central, ShockTillYouDrop, Rotten Tomatoes, Spill, HitFix, The Geek Couch, Screen Junkies, and passionate bloggers like Final Girl, The Horror Club, Eternal Vigilance, Horror Fatale, The Horror Geek, Horrors Not Dead, and The Vault of Horror.

Scott Weinberg and I are the Cinematical night owls. You're probably reading this at a very sensible time of the day, enjoying something called "sunshine" and a "blue sky," and we're probably sleeping. That's how dedicated the folks at Cinematical are -- we work around the clock!

I tell you this because you might be wondering why one Cinematical writer is posting about another. That's because Mr. Weinberg likes to shyly send me links to prove he never actually does sleep, and instead works 24/7 watching, reviewing, and compiling the best and worst in horror films all year long. He's gone and done it again over at GreenCine, compiling the Top 50 Horror DVDs of 2008. I've seen maybe three of these, because I actually do require sleep.

So heck -- I decided to be the Pepper Potts to his Tony Stark and write up a little something, since he was too modest to do it himself. Plus, the real reason Weinberg sent me the link was to show me GreenCine, which I'm itching to explore further. This place is like an indie-Netflix, with the added benefit of being able to access a community of lists, reviews, and recommendations. You can rent, download, and buy movies here -- it's going to be a lot of fun to watch this place grow. Between this and Netflix, movie fans may be leaving their houses less and less. I know you and I will -- we've got to beat Weinberg at his own movie watching game!

I've been sitting here for about five minutes trying to decide the best format for this year-end article. Do I just throw out a bunch of titles and then wait for the inevitable response(s) of "Dude, we've seen those ones. Got anything more obscure-ish?" Or do I list EVERY single horror film that hit the scene in 2008, and then give each one a star rating and a few pithy comments?

But then I remembered how much I love chronological order. My life, for example, is lived chronologically, and I wouldn't have it any other way. So let's start in January and simply slither forward. I'm including only the highlights of each month, so if you're looking for me to make fun of stuff like Pulse 2, Shutter, of freakin' Prom Night, I'm sorry to disappoint you. (OK, fine: I'll cover the crap too. I just can't say no to gorehounds.)

January -- The 18th saw the arrival of two fine genre films: One a big hit called Cloverfield and the other a little indie piece called Teeth. Obviously a monster movie and a flick about a toothed vagina don't have much in common, but indeed, both were smarter than they had to be, dark and nasty here and there, and quite a bit of fun. Also pretty surprising: The relative quality of White Noise 2. (Booo: One Missed Call, Boogeyman 2, Lake Placid 2)

February -- From overseas we got Shrooms, Storm Warning, and Black Water. All three are worthy of a rental. From the indie-makers we got Spiral, Diary of the Dead, and The Signal. Solid stuff. From Hollywood? A freakin' remake of The Eye. I've seen scarier film on old pudding.

When you shelled out nine bucks this weekend to see if Jigsaw would do anything new in Saw V (answer: nope), you were also contributing to a milestone. With the Friday-Sunday $30 million haul, the Saw series is now the highest grossing horror franchise in history, with a cumulative domestic gross of $316 million. Just think of all the microcassette tapes and countdown timers that kind of money could buy!

Of course, the other heavy hitters in this field -- Halloween, Friday the 13th, and A Nightmare on Elm Street -- were mostly released in the 1980s, when movie tickets were a lot cheaper. It's no surprise that a franchise launched in the 2000s would be more lucrative. Still, Saw has made its loot in just five films, compared to Elm Street's eight (including Freddy vs. Jason), Halloween's nine (including last year's remake), and Friday the 13th's eleven (including Freddy vs. Jason again).

A curious fact: Prior to this weekend, the race was surprisingly close. Box Office Mojo has the Friday the 13th series at $315 million, Elm Street at $307 million, and Halloween at $275 million. (Lionsgate's press release touting the Saw achievement has the Halloween series at $307 million, but I don't know where they're getting that from.)

But Jigsaw shouldn't rest on his laurels just yet. The Friday the 13th reboot due in February is liable to put Jason Voorhees in the lead again, although that will be short-lived if the seemingly inevitable Saw VI does indeed appear next October. If the Friday remake is successful, though, it could lead to more sequels and more competition. Personally, I'd rather have a mute, hockey-masked punisher as the all-time box office champ over a cancer-brained faux-intellectual who can't shut up. But that's just me! You can vote however you want. In the meantime, congrats to Saw for out-grossing Freddy, Michael, and Jason, and congrats to me for not making a pun on the word "grossing."

I haven't even finished all of my Fantastic Fest work yet (expect a semi-large wrap-up real soon), but my inbox has been flooded with new reports from three other genre festivals. And since I love this stuff, I figured I'd throw 'em all into one handy section. Let's begin reverse-chronologically, shall we?

Beginning on October 17 is the small-but-powerful Toronto After Dark festival (October 17 - 24), which aims to fill a post-TIFF void while Midnight Madness programmer Colin Geddes and his staff take a well-earned vacation. I shan't be able to attend this fine-looking event, but the final slate just came in -- and I can definitely vouch for titles like the brilliant Let the Right On, the amusingly bizarre South of Heaven, the splatterific Tokyo Gore Police, and the stylishly nasty Donkey Punch. Among those "ooh, I wanna see that" titles we have Kevin Tenney's Brain Dead, the comedy horror Netherbeast Incorporated, and I Sell the Dead, which stars Ron Perlman, Dominic Monaghan, Larry Fessenden AND Angus Scrimm. Cool. For more info on Toronto After Dark, click right here.

After the jump: More geeky droolings on L.A. Screamfest and the biggie: SITGES!