Haley Joel Osment, who earned a Best Supporting Actor nomination for his role as Cole Sear in The Sixth Sense, is set to return to acting after an 8-year break for school. The now 23-year-old actor was last seen in 2003′s Secondhand Lions.

Variety reports Osment will star in Wake the Dead, an adaptation of 30 Days of Night author Stephen Niles‘s graphic novel that takes the Frankenstein story and sets it in the present day. Osment will play a college student named Victor Franklin who, in his studies, experiments with reversing death.

Wake the Dead is being produces through the guitarist Slash‘s horror banner, Slasher Films. Jay Russell (Ladder 49) is set to direct. Says Slasher Films producer Rob Eric of Osment’s casting, “This role allows him to break out of his shell and he will have no problem handling it.”

So far, Wake the Dead looks like the most promising of the numerous upcoming Frankenstein films. This Dark Endeavor, based on a young adult novel by Kenneth Oppel, picked up by Summit, the Twilight studio, and produced by Karen Rosenfelt, tells the angsty story of the apprenticeship of Victor Frankenstein. As /Film reports, the book comes out in August, and Hollywood wants to be ready to ride the tween horror wave to money beach again.

Meanwhile, Lakeshore Entertainment is working on an adaptation of Kevin Grevioux‘s graphic novel, I, Frankenstein, about a modern world protected from the supernatural by a Hellboy-esque Frankenstein’s Monster. [THR]

Does every Frankenstein-related movie have to be based directly on a book or graphic novel?